Clifford Case

The announcement today that U.S. Senator Arlen Specter is switching parties is of little significance to New Jersey politics, except that it comes at a time when establishment Republicans are engaged in a fierce battle with conservatives for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.  Specter’s decision will likely upset some party leaders who view him as the type of Republican who can win a state that is trending Democratic.  And his switch will probably evoke a sort of “good riddance, rino” attitude from the conservative wing of the New Jersey GOP.

New Jersey, which hasn’t elected a Republican U.S. Senator since Clifford Case won a fourth term in 1972, has tossed two of their last three GOP Senators before the general election: Albert Hawkes was dumped by party leaders in his bid for a second term in 1948, and Case lost the 1978 GOP primary to conservative Jeffrey Bell.  And New Jersey Republicans have tossed one of their last three GOP Governors: incumbent William Cahill was ousted in the 1973 primary by Charles Sandman, a conservative Congressman.  (Another Republican Governor, Christine Todd Whitman, has been battling conservatives in a bid to keep moderates in the Republican Party.)

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Union County was a bit late when it came to electing women to the New Jersey Legislature, and then set some records by sending a woman to Congress and elected the first two women to the State Senate.  But Union County hasn't had a Republican Assemblywoman in almost 29 years.

Westfield Republican Irene Griffin became the first women to represent Union County in the State Assembly when won the seat in 1944 - two years after losing a GOP primary.  Griffin, a former Vice President of the Union County PTA, won the seat of Assemblyman Clifford Case (R-Rahway), who was seeking a seat in Congress. In the GOP primary, she placed fourth for four seats in a field of fourteen candidates.

She did not seek re-election in 1945 (until 1947, members of the lower house ran for one-year terms).  She sought to become the first woman in the State Senate in 1947, when Herbert Pascoe (R-Elizabeth) stepped down, but lost the GOP nod to Assemblyman Kenneth Hand (R-Elizabeth).

Griffin challenged incumbent Assemblywoman Florence Dwyer (R-Elizabeth) in the 1951 GOP primary, but was unsuccessful.  Dwyer defeated Griffin again in 1956, when the two faced off in a Republican congressional primary; in the general election, Dwyer unseated the incumbent Congressman, Harrison Williams (D-Plainfield).

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There is some risk involved as political rivals of former U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie seek to make Herbert Stern an issue in the 2009 gubernatorial campaign.  A former Federal Judge and U.S. Attorney, Stern is a man of considerable gravitas.  Making him look like a common pay-to-play lawyer could backfire if they seek to impugn his integrity. 

Stern was a career prosecutor who went from law school to trying Homicide cases as an Assistant Manhattan District Attorney. (He was the DA sent to the scene when Civil Rights leader Malcolm X. Shabbaz was murdered.) He spent four years as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice's Organized Crime and Racketeering Section. When Frederick Lacey became the new U.S. Attorney for New Jersey in 1969, he hired Stern as Chief Assistant. The two met a year earlier during the prosecution of Peter Weber, the powerful head of the New Jersey Operating Engineers Union. Stern was the prosecutor and Lacey was the defense attorney; Stern won.

Stern was named U.S. Attorney in 1970, when Lacey became a Federal Judge. In 1974, Stern joined Lacey on the bench and was replaced by his deputy, Jonathan Goldstein, also a career prosecutor.

This trio of federal prosecutors won national attention for their war on political corruption and for their aggressive prosecution of organized crime figures. While nominally Republican (they were appointed by Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford at the suggestion of GOP U.S. Senator Clifford Case), they were viewed as fairly non-political. In fact, they took town several key members of Republican Governor William Cahill's administration; that scandal contributed toward Cahill's defeat in the 1973 GOP primary.

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CLINTON – By design, Matt Holt’s grandfather, the late U.S. Sen. Clifford P. Case, kept politics separate from his family, so Holt learned what he knows about the trade on his own, at the local level. 

After trying at first and failing, he won a seat on the Clinton Town Council with the death of Councilman Rich Simpson. 

Six years into his service, Holt decided he wanted to be mayor. 

He told longtime incumbent Mayor Allie McGahren of his plans. McGahren told Holt she wanted to be mayor for two more years. If he could hold off until then, she would retire and cede the field to the young up-and-comer. She followed through on the agreement, and Holt was elected mayor.

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There is a temptation by the media, including this site, to designate former U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie as the front runner for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.  A Quinnipiac poll released yesterday with a 27-point lead, 44%-17%, over former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan. 

A February 2001 Quinnipiac poll had Acting Gov. Donald DiFrancesco leading Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler 45%-16% among Republican primary voters.  A Quinnipiac poll taken in May showed former U.S. Rep. Bob Franks with a 46%-24% lead over Schundler.  Schundler won the primary by fourteen points, 57%-43%. 

In 2000, former Gov. Jim Florio had a 57%-22% lead over first-time candidate Jon Corzine in a February Quinnipiac poll.  Corzine won the primary 58%-42%.

Conservative Jeff Bell, a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, beat four-term U.S. Senator Clifford Case in the 1978 GOP Primary by a 51%-49% margin.  But just a month earlier, an Eagleton-Rutgers poll had Case leading Bell 35%-7%.

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If Hunterdon County Freeholder Matthew Holt wins his bid for State Assembly, he'll follow a 23rd district tradition of sending the scion of prominent Republican families to the Legislature.  He is the grandson of Clifford Case, who represented New Jersey in the United States Senate from 1955 to 1979, and Union County in the State Assembly from 1943 to 1944.

Leonard Lance, who represented the 23rd district from 1991 until taking his seat in Congress earlier this month, is the son of Wesley Lance, a former Senate President who served from 1942 to 1943, and again from 1954 to 1962.  Walter "Moose" Foran, who served in the Assembly from 1970 to 1977, and in the Senate from 1977 until his death in 1986, was the son of former Senate President Arthur Foran, who served from 1936 to 1941.

Seven legislators had fathers who served in Trenton: State Senators Christopher Bateman and Christopher Connors, Assemblyman Thomas Giblin and Assemblywoman Alison Littell McHose had fathers who were in the State Senate; and State Sen. Thomas Kean, Jr., Assemblyman Peter Barnes and Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle had fathers who served in the State Assembly. Read More >

Only twice have incumbent statewide officeholders lost primary elections.  They were both Republicans: in 1973, U.S. Rep. Charles Sandman defeated Governor William Cahill by a 58%-41% margin; and in 1978, when four-term U.S. Senator Clifford Case lost to Jeffrey Bell, a 35-year-old former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, by a 51%-49% margin.

In 1977, Governor Brendan Byrne had ten opponents in the Democratic primary, including two Congressmen, a State Senator, and his own Commissioner of Labor.  Byrne won with 30% of the vote; U.S. Rep. Robert Roe came in second with 23%.

The most high profile primary against an incumbent came in 2008, when 84-year-old U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg faced a major challenge from U.S. Rep. Robert Andrews.  Lautenberg won 59% of the vote in the Democratic primary, with 35% for Andrews and 6% for Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello. 

Lautenberg has faced two minor challenges as an incumbent.  He won 81% against Bill Campbell and Lynne Speed in 1994 and 80% against Elnardo Webster (the father of a powerful Democratic lawyer) and Harold Young in 1988.

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If Chris Christie wins the 2009 gubernatorial election, he’ll become the first former U.S. Attorney from New Jersey to win public office since Garret Wall was elected to the United States Senate in 1835.  Wall was an Assemblyman from Middletown when he was named federal prosecutor in 1828; he was elected Governor the following year but declined to serve.

Thorn Lord, who was U.S. Attorney from 1943 to 1945, was the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in 1960.  He lost to the Republican incumbent, Clifford Case.  (For extreme political junkies, Lord’s law partner was Richard Hughes, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney who was elected Governor in 1961.)

Robert DelTufo, the U.S. Attorney from 1977 to 1980, sought the Democratic nomination for Governor in 1985.  He finished fifth in a field of six primary candidates with 4% of the vote.

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Leonard Lance offered a lesson in New Jersey political history during his farewell address to the State Senate on Monday - but unfortunately got one of his facts wrong. Lance spoke of his first memory of the Senate, going to Trenton in 1956, at age three and a half, when his father was the Senator from Hunterdon County and watching some Senators like Wayne Dumont (the Senate President), Frank "Hap" Farley and Mark Anton. While Lance's knowledge is always impressive, he got one thing wrong: Anton wasn't in the Senate in 1956; he lost re-election two months earlier.

Anton, the Chairman of the Suburban Propane Gas Corporation, was a half-term Republican from Essex County who was elected in a 1953 special election after Alfred Clapp, who had mounted an unsuccessful campaign for the GOP gubernatorial election, resigned to become a Superior Court Judge. When Anton sought a full term in 1955, he found himself in a feud with former U.S. Attorney William Tompkins, a former Assemblyman from Essex County who was at the time serving as the Assistant U.S. Attorney General. Anton and Tompkins were both interested in seeking the Republican nomination for Governor in 1957.

Tompkins, who considered challenging Anton himself (he ran for the Senate ten years later but lost to a Democratic slate headed by John Giblin), instead recruited Assembly Majority Leader William Barnes to run. Barnes attacked Anton for his support of night harness racing and his membership on a citizens committee formed to end a high profile strike on the New York pier, but lost the primary to Anton, 53%-47%.

Unable to unite the Essex GOP in the general election, Anton lost to Democrat Donal Fox. Fox, a former Assistant Essex County Prosecutor who had managed the nearly successful U.S. Senate campaign of Charles Howell in 1954 (Howell, a Democratic Congressman from Mercer County, lost the open Senate seat to Republican Clifford Case by an excruciatingly close 48.7%-48.5% margin), became the first Democrat to win the Essex Senate seat since 1908. He took office on the day Lance described as his first memory of visiting the Senate chamber.

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Frank Lautenberg becomes the first U.S. Senator from New Jersey to win a fifth term, but didn't set any records for winning percentages.  His 56% against former U.S. Rep. Richard Zimmer was his career best, but he didn't approach the 60% mark that Bill Bradley, Clifford Case and Harrison Williams had achieved back in a time when the state was more politically competitive.  Still, the 84-year-old Democrat is secure for the next six years, and did not have to sweat much after pushing back a primary challenge from U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews.

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