Dean Gallo

If Christopher Christie wins his race for Governor, look for Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce (R-Parsippany) to actively seek a post in the new administration.  The 73-year-old Morris County Republican has been anxious to serve in the cabinet for several years; he was interested enough in becoming the Commissioner of Transportation that he discussed the job with then-Gov. James E. McGreevey. 

“I am singularly focused on winning a Republican majority in the state Assembly and helping Chris Christie become the next Governor of New Jersey. I am not interested in becoming Transportation Commissioner," DeCroce said in an e-mail to PolitickerNJ.com. "I am very interested in serving as Assembly Speaker and working with Governor Christie to restore fiscal sanity and make New Jersey affordable again. Any report to the contrary is simply false.”

A DeCroce move to the administration would create two new campaigns - one to replace him as the Assembly Minority Leader (assuming the GOP does not capture control of the Assembly in November) and the other to fill his District 26 Assembly seat.  Some Assembly Republicans believe a leadership battle could turn out to be contest between the GOP Conference Leader, Peter Biondi (R-Hillsborough) and Minority Whip Jon Bramnick (R-Westfield).  Biondi has been eyeing the Minority Leader post for a while, and has reportedly considered challenging DeCroce.    Don't count out Assemblywoman Alison McHose (R-Franklin) as a leadership candidate.

Gov. Jon Corzine might have pulled a rabbit out of his hat by suddenly finding an extra $400 million for his budget, but the political trick of the week goes to Morris County Democratic Chairman Lewis Candura.  Frustrated by his inability to select a new Superintendent of Elections to replace the late Rosemary Travaglia without having State Sens. Anthony Bucco (R-Boonton) and Joseph Pennacchio (R-Montville) block the gubernatorial appointment, Candura picked Frank Herbert, a 78-year-old retired English teacher from Rockaway.  Herbert served one term as a Democratic State Senator from Bergen County (1978 to 1982), and Senate rules do not permit senatorial courtesy to be used to block a former member of the upper house.

Herbert is actually a good pick for Morris County Democrats: younger than the state's current senior United States Senator, he first won public office in 1969 when he was elected Waldwick Councilman.  He won a race for Bergen County Freeholder in 1973 -- the Watergate landslide year -- defeating future Congressman Harold Hollenbeck.   (Hollenbeck, elected to the State Senate in 1971, opted to run for Freeholder instead of re-election.)

Defeated for a second term as Freeholder in 1976, Herbert ran for an open State Senate seat in 1977.  The 39th district had gone Democratic in 1973, elected Raymond Garramone to the State Senate and two Democrats to the State Assembly.

Instead of seeking a second term in the Senate, Garramone instead ran for Governor -- unsuccessfully challenging incumbent Brendan Byrne in the Democratic primary.  The Republicans ran John Markert, who had won one of the Assembly seats in 1975.  But Byrne carried the 39th in the general and helped Herbert score a 53%-47% victory in the Senate race

Four years later, the Republicans ran Gerald Cardinale (R-Demarest), who had lost an Assembly race in 1977 but won in 1979.  Cardinale easily defeated Herbert, 58%-42% -- a margin of nearly 11,000 votes.

John Adler won a seat in Congress eighteen years after his first House race.

Now it seems trendy to run for Congress, lose, then spend a lot of years in state government before finally making it to Washington.  In 2006, Albio Sires won an open House seat twenty years after his first attempt.  Sires had challenged U.S. Rep. Frank Guarini as a Republican in 1986; he later won local office in West New York, and after switching parties in 1999, he beat an incumbent Assemblyman in the Democratic primary.  He became Assembly Speaker after the 2001 election, and went to Congress after Bob Menendez joined the United States Senate.

Both of New Jersey's freshmen Congressman had previously lost House races.  John Adler ran against Jim Saxton in 1990 and lost 60%-40%.  A year later, despite one of the two biggest Republican landslides in state political history, he ousted four-term GOP State Sen. Lee Laskin.  Leonard Lance first ran for Congress in 1996, when Richard Zimmer gave up his seat to run for U.S. Senate; he finished third in the GOP primary, behind Michael Pappas and John Bennett. Lance moved from the Assembly to the Satate Senate in 2001, and became Minority Leader in 2004.

Joseph Minish, who passed away on Saturday at age 91, may be one of the top vote-getters in Essex County history.  He won eleven races for Congress without ever falling below 58% in a district that was potentially competitive for Republicans. 

When Minish first won in 1962, the eleventh district included the Central and West Wards of Newark and suburban (sometimes Republican-leaning) Essex town.  By 1972, Newark was entirely out of his district, and his district included working class (and politically competitive) towns like Belleville, Bloomfield, West Orange, Montclair Hillside, North Arlington and Little Falls, Republican strongholds like the Maplewood and the Caldwells.

Republican presidential candidates carried the eleventh district in four successive elections: Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter by a 50%-40% margin in 1980, Gerald Ford carried it 54%-46% in 1976, Richard Nixon won it 60%-40% over George McGovern in 1972 and by 166 votes over Hubert Humphrey in 1968.  But Reagan, Ford and Nixon had no coattails for Minish’s GOP opponents.

Rep. Joseph Minish, third from left, with President Lyndon Johnson and other New Jersey Democratic Congressmen in 1965
Former Rep. Joseph Minish, an Essex County Democrat who served in Congress from 1963 to 1985, died on Saturday. He was 91.

Minish was a labor leader when Democrats picked him to run for an open House seat in 1962. He defeated Orange attorney Frank Palmieri by a 60%-37% margin, and held the seat for 22 years. He lost in 1984, after redistricting added heavily-Republican Morris County to his suburban Essex seat; Dean Gallo, the Assembly Minority Leader, defeated him 56%-44%.

New Jereyan Larry Cirignano, a former New Jersey political operative who has run Catholic Citizenship, an issue advocacy group that opposes Abortion and gay marriage, is currently on trial in Massachusetts. He is accused of assaulting a protester at a Worcester, MA rally against civil unions last December. Cirignano, who was an aide to the late Congressman Dean Gallo (a pro-choice Republican), allegedly shoved the protester, Sarah Loy, and knocked her to the ground. Yesterday, a state Judge dropped a civil right charge against Cirignano.

Chatter about a conservative primary challenge to Congressman Rodney Frelinghuysen is nothing new. In late 2001, attorney Paul Castronovo, who had been Morris County Coordinator for Bret Schundler's gubernatorial campaign, publicly explored a race, but eventually backed down. So far, the only Frelinghuysen opponent to get any real attention was in 2000, when Michael Moore held a news conference in Morris County to announce that he was running a Ficus plant as a write-candidate in the GOP primary.

Morris County Republicans traditionally don't hold grudges, which might make it a little easier for Jay Webber as he embarks on a bid to win a State Assembly seat in the 26th district. If he wins, Webber -- who ran a strong race for State Senate against Robert Martin in 2003 -- would join a long list of public officials who won after taking on incumbents in a GOP primary.

Rodney Frelinghuysen challenged Republican incumbent James Courter in the 1982 congressional primary and then won a State Assembly seat in 1983 after ousting Republican Assemblyman William Bishop in the primary.

Joseph Pennacchio, who is the heavy favorite to succeed Martin in the Senate next year, launched his political career by running against Congressman Dean Gallo in the 1984 primary. That was a particularly nasty race, especially since Gallo -- unbeknownst to Pennacchio -- was suffering from cancer. Pennacchio went on to win races for Freeholder and State Assembly.

Michael Patrick Carrolll took on Frelinghuysen and incumbent Arthur Albohn in a 1993 primary for State Assembly before winning the seat in 1995. Rick Merkt ran against incumbent Anthony Bucco in 1995 and won the seat in 1997. John Inglesino ran against Carroll in 1997 and later won a seat on the Morris County Board of Freeholders.