Clifford Case

The Courier News today endorsed two incumbent Hunterdon County Freeholders, Matt Holt and Ron Sworen, for re-election.

Gov. Richard Hughes

The #1 process issue of the 1965 campaign for Governor of New Jersey was over a Rutgers University professor who was a self-professed Marxist.  The GOP nominee, State Sen. Wayne Dumont (R-Phillipsburg) sought to hold Democratic Gov. Richard Hughes accountable for refusing to call for the firing of Prof. Eugene Genovese.

During an April '65 teach-in on the Vietnam War, Genovese told students: "Those of you who know me know that I am a Marxist and a Socialist.  Therefore, unlike most of my distinguished colleagues here this morning, I do not fear or regret the impending Vietcong victory in Vietnam.  I welcome it."

Hughes called Genovese's comments offensive, but declined to get involved in the politics of calling for the termination of a state university professor.  Dumont demanded that Genovese be fired, and said that the Rutgers teach-ins were "part and parcel of an organized conspiracy to undermine our position in Vietnam."

Dumont spent the next three months seeking to link the governor to the Rutgers issue, even going as far as to suggest that Hughes did not understand the danger of communism.  But the Warren County Republican stopped short of saying that Hughes was soft on communism. 

Hughes accused Dumont of politicizing dead American soldiers in Vietnam, and said that his Republican rival was an extremist.  "By using for his own little political gain the individual tragedies of young men dead in Vietnam, in what can only be called a kind of ‘vampire politics,' my opponent has opened a Pandora's box for the extremists of this state and nation," Hughes said.

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park) turns 86 in January. His term is up four years after that.

Massachusetts Legislature has passed a bill that will allow the Democratic governor to appoint an interim United States Senator to replace the late Ted Kennedy.  Five years ago, when there was a good chance that Democrat John Kerry might get elected president, the Democratic-controlled Legislature changed the law so that Republican Gov. Mitt Romney could not appoint Kerry's successor.  The state now has no Senator as voters await a special election.

In New Jersey, where polls show Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine trailing in his re-election bid, some Democratic leaders are talking about a contingency plan that might prevent Republican Christopher Christie from appointing a U.S. Senator, if Democrat Frank Lautenberg, who turns 86 in January, leaves office without finishing the final four years of his term.  If Corzine loses, one plan that will receive consideration, Democratic sources say, would be legislation passed during the lame duck session later this year taking the appointment away from the governor and forcing a quick special election.  Corzine could sign that bill before he leaves office in January.

The GOP's best hope of electing a Republican U.S. Senator could come with the election of a Republican governor.  Democrats, anxious to mainatin their filibuster-proof 60-vote majority, may not want to chance it.  And New Jersey's junior Senator, Robert Menendez, is the Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park) turns 86 in January. His term is up four years after that.

The Democratic-controlled Massachusetts Legislature, thinking John Kerry might win the presidency in 2004, changed state law to take away the power of the governor to fill U.S. Senate vacancies by appointment.  They didn't want the Republican governor, Mitt Romney, replacing Kerry in the Senate with a Republican.  Now that Democrat Deval Patrick is governor, there's a move to reinstate the power so that a Democrat can fill the late Ted Kennedy's seat on an interim basis.

New Jersey has not elected a Republican to the United States Senate since Clifford Case won his fourth term in 1972.  But some Democrats, seeing GOP gubernatorial candidate Christopher Christie enter September with a ten point lead over Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine, have another worry: a GOP governor could send a Republican to the U.S. Senate, if a vacancy were to occur.

Frank Lautenberg will turn 86 in January and still has four years left on his term.  No punches should be pulled here: there has been no shortage of Democrats posturing for a Senate seat in the event that Lautenberg does not finish his term, and Christie's healthy poll numbers has forced the realization that the next U.S. Senator from New Jersey could be a Republican.

If Christie wins, Democrats might need to replicate the Massachusetts law as an insurance policy on their Senate seat -- and get Corzine to sign it before he leaves office in January.   Democrats will especially want to prevent New Jersey's seat from flipping while Robert Menendez is the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chairman.

Just last week, a Star-Ledger editorial endorsed a proposal by a Wisconsin Senator to eliminate all Senate appointments and fill vacancies only by special election. According to the editorial, 20% of American voters may be represented by unelected U.S. Senators in the near future.

In an attempt to send a message, nearly one out of four Democrats who voted in Tuesday's Democratic primary (23%) did not vote for the incumbent Governor, Jon Corzine.  None of Corzine's three primary opponents, former Glen Ridge Mayor Carl Bergmanson (9%), 9/11 conspiracy theorist Jeff Boss (8%) and factory worker Roger Bacon (6%) spent more than couple of thousand dollars and had no organizational or interest group endorsements. 

Among the most significant political stories of the day was a Star-Ledger report that the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the state's largest public employee union, threatened to picket Corzine's campaign kickoff rally tonight - a move that might have led to Vice President Joseph Biden cancelling his appearance.  In order to avoid the controversy, Corzine agreed to a deal with the union on furloughs, according to the published report.

Gov. Jon Corzine faces just token opposition in the Democratic primary, although some pundits are watching to see if a significant number of Democrats - perhaps more than twenty percent of them - vote against him anyway.  In what is more of a race for second place, three other Democrats are running for Governor: Carl Bergmanson, a former Mayor of Glen Ridge; Roger Bacon, a factory worker who runs a customized ceramic mug business; and Jeff Boss, who claims to have witnessed the U.S. government planning the 9/11 terrorist attack. 

There are reports that some public employee unions are, very quietly, suggesting that their members vote for Bergmanson.  Their hope is that the vote totals of today's primary could influence Corzine over the next 28 days. 

More than thirty years before New Jersey's Robert Torricelli floated the idea of Hillary Rodham Clinton running for the United States Senate from New York, the Ocean County Democratic organization voted to endorse Jacqueline Kennedy for the U.S. Senate against Republican incumbent Clifford Case in 1966.

Gov. Richard Hughes, a Democrat, was forced to apologize after Cape May County Democratic Chairman Joseph Tennenbaum said he would not back the former First lady for the Senate.  Tennenbaum, according to the New York Times, said, "Perhaps Jackie is a little too far out for us.  She belongs to the jet set.  Besides I think we have had enough of the Kennedys for a while."  Hughes called Tennebbaum's comments "embarrassing, outrageous and deplorable."

For New Jersey Democrats, there was never a better year than 1973.  Republicans ousted their incumbent Governor, moderate William Cahill, in the primary and replaced him with Charles Sandman, a conservative Congressman.  Democrats, helped by the Watergate scandal in Washington (two weeks before the general election, Richard Nixon fired the Watergate special prosecutor in what was called "The Saturday Night Massacre") and the criminal conviction of top GOP officeholders in New Jersey, won the governorship by 721,378 votes (68%-32%).  Brendan Byrne won every county but Cape May - Sandman's home county.  Sandman's defeat was the worst for a Republican in New Jersey history.

Democrats picked up thirteen State Senate seats and 26 Assembly seats, leaving the Legislature with ten Republicans in the Senate and fourteen in the Assembly.  Only four legislative districts out of forty elected Republicans to the Senate and both Assembly seats; 36 districts sent at least one Democrat to the Legislature, including Hunterdon, Ocean, Morris, Sussex and Warren counties.

Jack Kemp, the former NFL player and nine-term New York Congressman who passed away tonight at the age of 73, played key roles in two New Jersey Republican statewide primaries.   In 1978, Kemp campaigned for Jeffrey Bell, a conservative former Reagan speechwriter who beat four-term incumbent Clifford Case in the Republican primary.  Part of Bell’s campaign platform included his strong support for Kemp-Roth, which sought to reduce income tax rates by nearly 33%. In 1981, Kemp endorsed Tom Kean in his bid for the Republican nomination for Governor.  With endorsements from conservatives like Kemp and Bell, Kean was able to enhance his appeal to GOP primary voters.

One of the best legislative contests of the 20th century came in 1955, when two future billionaires faced off to represent Somerset County in the New Jersey State Senate. The Republican incumbent, magazine publisher Malcom S. Forbes, defeated industrialist Charles W. Englehard, Jr. by just 370 votes, 19,981 to 19,611.

Forbes launched his political career four years earlier, at age 31, when he mounted a massive door-to-door campaign to defeat the incumbent, Freas L. Hess, in the Republican primary. Hess, 55, who had the backing of the Somerset GOP organization, had won a Senate seat in 1947 after nine years in the Assembly that included terms as Speaker and Majority Leader.