Clifford Case

The Democratic U.S. Senate primary in Connecticut next week has some similarities to New Jersey's GOP U.S. Senate primary of 1978. Conservatives had almost captured the Republican presidential nomination in 1976, when Ronald Reagan came close to defeating an incumbent President; two years later, Jeffrey Bell, a conservative who had been Reagan's speechwriter, challenged four-term incumbent Senator Clifford Case. Case was enormously popular among independents and even Democrats, but was viewed as too liberal for his own party and Bell beat him in the primary. Ned Lamont's challenge to Senator Joseph Lieberman comes two years after progressive Democrats believed they had secured the presidential nomination for Howard Dean.

Lieberman says he will run as an Independent if he loses the Democratic primary, which raises an interesting question for New Jersey political junkies: how would Case, who won re-election in 1972 by over 700,000 votes, have fared in the 1978 general election had he run as an Independent against Bell and Democrat Bill Bradley?

For extreme political junkies, here's the list of incumbent U.S. Senators to lose primaries over the last sixty years:

2002: Bob Smith lost to John Sununu, New Hampshire
1996: Sheila Fraham lost to Sam Brownback, Kansas
1992: Alan Dixon lost to Carol Mosely Braun, Illinois
1980: Jacob Javits lost to Al D'Amato, New York
1989: Mike Gravel lost to Clark Gruening, Alaska (Frank Murkowksi won seat)
1980: Donald Stewart lost to Jim Folsom, Alabama (Jeremiah Denton won seat)
1980: Richard Stone lost to Bill Gunter, Florida (Paula Hawkins won seat)
1978: Clifford Case lost to Jeff Bell, New Jersey (Bill Bradley won seat)
1978: Maryon Allen lost to Donald Stewart, Alabama
1978: Paul Hatfield lost to Max Baucus, Montana
1974: J. William Fullbright lost to Dale Bumpers, Arkansas
1974: Howard Metzenbaum lost to John Glenn, Ohio
1972: David Gambrell lost to Sam Nunn, Georgia
1972: Everett Jordan lost to Nick Galifanakis, North Carolina (Jesse Helms won seat)
1970: Ralph Yarborough lost to Lloyd Bentsen, Texas
1968: Edward Long lost to Thomas Eagleton, Missouri
1968: Ernest Gruening lost to Mike Gravel, Alaska
1968: Thomas Kuchel lost to Max Rafferty, California (Alan Cranston won seat)
1968: Frank Lausche lost to John Gilligan, Ohio (William Saxbe won seat)
1966: Donald Russell lost to Ernest Hollings, South Carolina
1966: Ross Bass lost to Frank Clement, Tennessee (Howard Baker won seat)
1966: Willis Robertson lost to William Spong, Virginia
1964: Howard Edmonston lost to Fred Harris, Oklahoma
1962: Maurice Murphy lost to Perkins Bass, New Hampshire (Thomas McIntyre won seat)
1954: Robert Upton lost to Norris Cotton, New Hampshire
1954: Alton Lennon lost to William Scott, North Carolina
1952: Ralph Brewster lost to William Payne, Maine
1952: Kenneth McKellar lost to Albert Gore, Tennessee
1950: Claude Pepper lost to William Smathers, Florida
1950: Glen Taylor lost to Worth Clark, Idaho (Herman Welker won seat)
1950: Frank Porter Graham lost to Willis Smith, North Carolina
1950: Elmer Thomas lost to Mike Monroney, Oklahoma
1950: Chandler Gurney lost to Francis Case, South Dakota
1948: Thomas Stewart lost to Estes Kefauver, Tennessee
1946: Charles Gossett lost to George Donart, Idaho (Henry Dworshak won seat)
1946: George Radcliffe lost to Herbert O'Conor, Maryland
1946: Henrik Shipstead lost to Edward Thye, Minnesota
1946: Burton Wheeler lost to Leif Erickson, Montana (Zales Ecton won seat)
1946: Robert LaFollette lost to Joseph McCarthy

New Jersey hasn't elected a Republican to the United States Senate since 1972, when Clifford Case won re-election to a fourth term. There are only two states where the GOP dry spell has gone longer: Hawaii, who last won in 1970 when Hiram Fong was re-elected, and West Virginia, where the last GOP Senator, William Revercomb (the winner of a 1956 special election) lost a re-election bid to Robert Byrd.

(Massachusetts is tied with New Jersey: their last GOP Senator was Edward Brooke, who last won in 1972).

State Senator Thomas Kean, Jr. heads into next Tuesday as the overwhelming favorite to win the Republican nomination for United States Senator over John Ginty, a banker from Ridgewood and retired U.S. Navy officer. Ginty entered the race late and has only about $20,000. His only exposure has been through true grass-roots contact with conservative activists, endorsements from pro-life groups, and the the relatively little small attention he's received from some daily newspapers.

Conservative challenges in New Jersey GOP primaries have often been more symbolic than anything else, although there have been some huge successes: conservatives upset a moderate-to-liberal Republican Governor in 1973 and U.S. Senator in 1978, and won the 2001 gubernatorial primary. There is some empirical evidence suggesting that the most conservative faction of the conservative wing of the New Jersey Republicans represents about 18% of the vote: in 1996, months after Bob Dole (not exactly a moderate) had already clinched the GOP presidential nomination, 18% of New Jersey's GOP primary voters cast their ballots for either Pat Buchanan or Alan Keyes. Two years earlier, Brian Kennedy, a former State Senator from Monmouth County, ran to the right of pro-life Assembly Speaker Garabed "Chuck" Haytaian in the GOP U.S. Senate primary; with no money or organization support, he captured 33% of the vote. In 1984, conservative Robert Morris, who had sought to expose communists in the federal government as a McCarthy-era Senate staffer, on 40% of the vote in the GOP Senate primary against the establishment candidate, former Montclair Mayor Mary Mochary. (Morris had the organization line in only his home county, Ocean.)

Way back in 1972, six years before Jeff Bell defeated Senator Clifford Case in the primary, James Walter Ralph, an unknown Bergen County physician, again with no money or organization support, captured 25% of the vote against Case.

The question for Kean is not if he will win, but whether he will be embarassed by his margin of victory. He must deal with Republican primary voters who either don't like him or did not like his father -- although their is no guarantee that those voters will be suffiently motivated to show up at the polls. Several Republican strategists say that for Ginty's symbolic campaign to be viewed as successful, he must get at least the 25% that Ralph did 34 years ago. But if Ginty can get to a third of the vote, as Kennedy in '94, the results may be interpreted as a severe weakness for Kean among the traditional Republican base vote he'll need to win a general election.

Michael Ferguson's House seat has been held by Republicans since 1956, when Assemblywoman Florence Dwyer unseated incumbent Harrison Williams. Williams won a 1953 special election after the five-term incumbent, Republican Clifford Case, resigned to become President of The Fund for the Republic. Dwyer spent sixteen years in Congress, retiring in 1972. She was replaced by Republican State Senator Matthew Rinaldo, who served until his retirement in 1992. Rinaldo's successor was Robert Franks, a State Assemblyman and Republican State Chairman, who served four terms before running for the United States Senate in 2000.

Case and Williams won open U.S. Senate seats after leaving Congress. Case won in 1954, narrowly defeating Democratic Congressman Charles Howell. Williams was elected in 1958, defeating GOP Congressman Robert Kean, the grandfather of U.S. Senate candidate Thomas Kean, Jr.

From the time he decided to embark upon his campaign for United States Senator, one of Tom Kean's greatest fears has been a head-to-head conservative challenge in the Republican primary. Kean has sought to build relationships with conservative leaders in an effort to clear the primary field, and it looked like his efforts paid off when potential conservative rivals -- Assemblymen Joseph Pennacchio and Michael Doherty, and former congressional candidate William Spadea -- decided early that they would not run.

But with just two weeks to go before the filing deadline, a conservative leader from Bergen County, banker John Ginty, is circulating petitions to run for the Senate. Ginty, who has lost two primary challenges to incumbent GOP Assemblymen in the 40th district, is a former Navy submarine officer and onetime Ridgewood Republican Club President (the same post from which Marge Roukema launched a 22-year congressional career). The genesis of his campaign is an intra-party battle in Bergen, where Kean has not yet accepted the GOP organization line in an attempt to avoid taking sides in a heated primary for County Executive, and for Republican County Chairman.

Some strategists say that a primary might be good for the 37-year-old State Senator, enabling him to get some practice before he faces incumbent Robert Menendez, a seasoned veteran of hard-fought political battles.

Conservative challenges in New Jersey GOP primaries have often been more symbolic than anything else, although there have been some huge successes: conservatives upset a moderate-to-liberal Republican Governor in 1973 and U.S. Senator in 1978, and won the 2001 gubernatorial primary. There is some empirical evidence suggesting that the most conservative faction of the conservative wing of the New Jersey Republicans represents about 18% of the vote: in 1996, months after Bob Dole (not exactly a moderate) had already clinched the GOP presidential nomination, 18% of New Jersey's GOP primary voters cast their ballots for either Pat Buchanan or Alan Keyes. Two years earlier, Brian Kennedy, a former State Senator from Monmouth County, ran to the right of pro-life Assembly Speaker Garabed "Chuck" Haytaian in the GOP U.S. Senate primary; with no money or organization support, he captured 33% of the vote. Way back in 1972, six years before Jeff Bell defeated Senator Clifford Case in the primary, James Walter Ralph, an unknown Bergen County physician, again with no money or organization support, captured 25% of the vote against Case.

For twenty years, Republican Clifford Case and Democrat Harrison Williams served together as United States Senators from New Jersey. Case sought re-election to a fifth term in 1978, but narrowly lost the Republican primary to a little-known conservative, former Reagan speechwriter Jeffrey Bell. Bell lost the general election to Bill Bradley by a 55%-45% margin, but many pundits believe that Case would have won the general election had he been the nominee. Williams' political career ended after an FBI sting operation videotaped him accepting a bribe. Williams resigned on March 11, 1982, just as the Senate was about to begin a vote to expel him. Case, who taught Political Science at Rutgers University after leaving the Senate, died on just six days earlier. Had Case won re-election in 1978, newly-elected Governor Thomas Kean would have had the opportunity to make two appointments to the United States Senate. New Jersey voters would have then elected two U.S. Senators in the 1982 election, with separate campaigns for a six-year term and a two-year unexpired term.

Republicans were were feeling optimistic about their chances in 1982. Ronald Reagan had easily carried New Jersey in 1980 and Kean, albeit narrowly, had won election as Governor. Since their Watergate era losses, Republicans had picked up four congressional seats, eight State Senate seats and 23 seats in the State Assembly. Four candidates were seeking support for the GOP Senate nomination: Congresswoman Millicent Fenwick, Congressman James Courter, former Republican State Chairman David Norcross (who had run against Williams in 1976), and Bell. Congressman James Florio, who had lost the Governor's race to Kean by just 1,797 votes statewide, was viewed as the strongest Democratic candidate, but he declined to run.

Kean carefully mulled his options in appointing a Republican to replace Williams, with the U.S. Senate seat remaining vacant for four weeks before Kean finally arrived at a decision. Courter and Bell had played prominent roles in Kean's '81 primary campaign, and Fenwick and Norcross had worked for Kean's campaign against Florio. Ultimately, Kean was unwilling to create a situation where his party would run an incumbent in the '82 general election at the risk of choosing between friends. He appointed Nicholas Brady, an unknown Wall Street investment banker and family friend, as a caretaker, allow Republicans to choose between Fenwick and Bell in the June primary. The Democrats, without a clear front-runner, nominated a self-funding millionaire businessman, Frank Lautenberg, who defeated two former Congressmen in the primary, and after a rather well-run campaign, Fenwick in the general. Case remains the last Republican to win a United States Senate seat in New Jersey.

Footnote: Case's 1978 primary campaign was managed by Anthony Ciciatiello, who first came to New Jersey in 1974 to run Kean's campaign for Congress. Kean ran for the open seat being vacated by eleven-term Republican Peter Frelinghuysen (the father of the current Congressman), but lost the primary to Fenwick by just 84 votes. Ciciatiello directed President Gerald Ford's New Jersey campaign in 1976 (Ford carried the state over Jimmy Carter by 65,000 votes) and then ran Kean's unsuccessful campaign for Governor in 1977 against State Senator Raymond Bateman. Ciciatiello eventually formed a lobbying and public relations firm, and is now an advisor to Tom Kean, Jr.'s U.S. Senate campaign.

Republican candidates for Governor and United States Senator in New Jersey have hit the 50% mark just twice over the last four decades: Thomas Kean in 1985 and Clifford Case in 1972. Kean fell short of 50% in his narrow 1981 win, and Christine Todd Whitman failed to win 50% in her 1993 and 1997 victories.

A new Wall Street Journal/Zogby poll shows State Senator Tom Kean, Jr. leading two Democratic Congressman in a hypothetical head-to-head contest for the United States Senate. Kean leads Rob Andrews by eight points, 44%-36%, and Bob Menendez by nine points, 43%-34%. Against popular Acting Governor Richard Codey, Kean trails by four pecentage points, 45%-41%. While Kean's strong showing is likely a residual benefit of his father's name ID (Tom Kean, Sr. was Governor from 1982 to 1990, and won re-election with 70% of the vote, carring 560 of the state's 563 municipalities), there has not been a poll showing a Republican leading in a New Jersey U.S. Senate race a year before the election since Clifford Case in 1971.

The WSJ/Zogby poll has Jon Corzine ahead of Doug Forrester, 48%-39%.