Democratic

Richard McClellan, who said earlier this month that he would step down as the Mercer County Democratic Chairman, will now remain in office through the county convention next month -- at the request of County Executive Brian Hughes and other local officials.

It’s almost a week after the primary in New Jersey, and the Democratic State Committee knows how many delegates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will get.

But it’s not clear exactly who those delegates will be, except for the 20 “superdelegates” who automatically get to go to the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

In our year-end review of New Jersey politics, PolitickerNJ.com gave our worst prediction of the year award to Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts for touting the relevance of New Jersey’s February 5 presidential primary. At the time, Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani held massive leads in this state.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) was in New Jersey today to hype the upcoming congressional campaigns of Linda Stender and John Adler, emphasizing the need to bring the two in to boost the Democrats’ relatively narrow majority in the House.

“We’ve worked very hard over the last number of years since the republicans took over the house to take back the house – not just for political purposes. Obviously all of us want to be in the majority, but what we really want to do is change the direction that the Republican congress and the Republican president have taken this country,” Hoyer told PolitickerNJ.com. “If we lose 15 people we lose the proposition.”

During Stender’s 2006 congressional campaign, in which she raised about $2 million without a tremendous amount of support from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and managed to come within one point of unseating Rep. Mike Ferugson, Hoyer came up to New Jersey to campaign for Stender several times.

Back in 2003, New Jersey Republicans made the legislative race about holding Jim McGreevey accountable. At the time, McGreevey was suffering from low approval ratings.

But it didn’t work -- the GOP wound up losing control of the Senate and losing more seats in the Assembly.

“I think in 2003 the message was a little too simple: ‘send a message to Jim McGreevey,’” said state GOP Chairman Tom Wilson. “I think that was less of a winner than talking about specific issues.”