Mark 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. An Essex County Freeholder, he was never a strong vote-getter: he defeated Democrat Charles Stanziale, a former Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney, by a narrow 50.4%-49.6% margin.

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, who had run a strong race against U.S. Rep. Hugh Addonizio in 1952, 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. Fox beat Anton 53%-48% and took office on the day Lance described as his first memory of visiting the Senate chamber.

Seeking re-election to as second term in 1959, Fox found himself in the middle of a battle between Governor Robert Meyner and Dennis Carey, the legendary Essex County Democratic Chairman over the new Essex County Prosecutor. The post was vacant because Charles Webb had resigned to launch his own State Senate campaign against Fox.

NEWARK - The lives of two Newarkers - one Black and one Italian - intersected, first at the beginning of their political careers when they ran against each other in an epic 1963 Essex County Senate contest, literally the last of its kind; and again last week when the two men sat together at the North Ward Center across a monumental arc of shared history.

Two street guys who built their respective bases as old school watering hole and barber shop campaigners, the fact that Robert Sarcone and George Richardson came from different parties didn't matter as much as their earliest calculations to pursue different political objectives: the former as the man who would-be governor and the latter as a relentless social agitator.

Both irrepressibly creatures of Newark, "We were the outsiders," said Richardson, 80, of himself and the 84-year old Sarcone. "Back then there was this major thrust to get involved and get the community involved, and from the beginning we always had a good relationship."

They met for the first time in over 40 years last week at a reunion arranged by North Ward Democratic leader Steve Adubato, Sr.

"Bobby Sarcone was the hope of our community," Adubato said. "George Richardson was a pioneer - the first serious political person we ever had."

A Republican from the North Ward, Sarcone inspired a generation of striving Italians, one of a local triumvirate of North Ward talent that included Mayor Hugh Addonizio and Congressman Peter Rodino. A star football player - "offense and defense in those days," who graduated with the first class of Barringer High School, Sarcone served with distinction in WWII as a naval officer, and returned to North Newark where he established a thriving law practice and engaged a family passion for politics.

"He was a dynamic campaigner, very articulate and very well respected and loved in the community," said Assemblyman Ralph Caputo (D-Belleville). "He was the prototype for that political era where people actually campaigned, when there was no computerized mailing. It was a physical thing. You had to be very close to the communities you served, and very organized. Society was different. There were half a million people in the City of Newark and it was a boiling point of politics.

"I tried to model myself on Sarcone," Caputo added. "I loved him."

After breaking into the Assembly as the only Essex Republican in 1959, Sarcone rose fast, becoming minority leader in 1962 when he saw his shot to move to the upper chamber. Of course, that shot wouldn't come without a fight, a condition Richardson knew intrinsically, although his own struggles increasingly were with his own party.

Born in Down Neck to African American parents who moved to Newark from the Deep South, Richardson immersed himself as a young man in Democratic Party politics following his bad conduct discharge from the Air Force for drug use. A hard luck street kid turned success story as an undaunted community leader, he forced his way into elected office as the only African American to serve in the Assembly during the Kennedy years.

His perceived radical tendencies and penchant for delivering civil rights speeches on the floor of the Statehouse quickly ran him afoul of the Essex County bosses, who in Richardson's view were more focused on the Passaic Valley Sewerage Authority than "I have a Dream."

Just as jittery was Mayor Hugh Addonizio, who made the 29-old Central Warder his commissioner of insurance, then six months later watched in horror as the upstart black joined a police brutality protest in front of City Hall.

"George, you can't do that," a visibly hurt Addonizio later told him. "You go out there like that, that means you're against me."

"I'm not against you," Richardson objected. "I'm against a pregnant woman getting beaten up by the cops."

Addonizio commiserated with legendary Party Chairman Dennis Carey, who in 1953 took charge of a county with a freeholder board that at that time was 9-0 in Republican hands, drove the first Essex Democrat in 47 years into the senate in 1955, and by 1959 had transformed Essex into a Democratic Party stronghold.

Of course, Richardson was already giving him fits.

This was in the days when it was one senator per county - 21 Senators total. Assemblymen were supposed to be nobodies, a concept Richardson apparently didn't grasp.

But Carey had another problem too as he headed toward the 1963 election, and that was his top of the ticket candidate, state Sen. Donal Fox, his onetime crowning glory. Carey and Fox constantly squabbled over sewerage authority appointments before the exasperated chairman finally decided to cut the senator loose - along with Richardson. Assembling a new ticket, Carey dumped the pair of recalcitrants and made Assembly Speaker Elmer Matthews, a book smart lace curtain Irish attorney born in South Orange, his senate candidate.

"Dennis Carey had big plans for Elmer Matthews, who was a polished Notre Dame grad and rising star in his own right," said Assemblyman Tom Giblin (D-Montclair). "I think Dennis Carey believed Matthews was a future governor."

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.