Diane Allen

If Joe Pennacchio wins his race for the United States Senate, he would become the first sitting State Senator to go directly to the U.S. Senate since William Smathers ousted Hamilton Kean in 1936.  Smathers was elected to the State Senate from Atlantic County in 1935 and went on to unseat the one-term incumbent, whose great-grandson, Thomas Kean, Jr., is now the State Senate Minority Leader.

The last incumbent State Senator to win a statewide U.S. Senate primary was Kean, Jr. in 2006, and before that, William Ely, a Bergen County Democrat who lost an open U.S. Senate race in 1938.  The rest, including Alexander Menza (1978), Dick LaRossa (1996), Bill Gormley (2000), Diane Allen and John Matheussen (2002).

State Sen. Diane Allen won't run for U.S. SenateDespite calls from party leaders urging her to run, Republican state Sen. Diane Allen will not make a bid for U.S. Senate.

Allen, who’s been sick with pneumonia for two months, said that she’s not well enough to forge ahead with a statewide campaign.

“If I were 100% well and on my game I might have stepped in the day that Anne (Estabrook) stepped out, because I had been a strong supporter of hers, but there’s really no use in speculating,” she said. “I’m still sick and it’s going to be a long while before I’m back in shape.”

The candidate the GOP establishment wanted -- Andy Unanue, a 40-year-old self-funding conservative millionaire Latino from Bergen County – began informing party leaders on Easter Sunday that he would enter the U.S. Senate race.  That gives those party leaders who were actively seeking an alternative to State Sen. Joseph Pennacchio (R-Morris) and Ron Paul campaign leader Murray Sabrin a viable choice in the race to challenge Frank Lautenberg. 

Several Republican leaders across the state are anxiously awaiting Goya Food heir Andy Unanue’s decision on whether or not to enter the U.S. Senate race.

State Sen. Joe Pennacchio may have won the county line for U.S. Senate in Bergen by a landslide earlier this month over hometown candidate Murray Sabrin, but if Unanue decides to run, things could change.

Bergen County Republican Chairman Rob Ortiz has been courting Unanue for some time. Unanue, who’s friends with Ortiz, is said to be interested, and plans to mull the prospect over the weekend and make a decision by Monday. He currently splits his time between his home in Alpine and an apartment on Manhattan’s Central Park West.

State Sen. Joe Pennacchio never had the enthusiastic support of most party leaders for his U.S. Senate candidacy. But just as it seemed like they had no option other than to coalesce around him instead of rival candidate Murray Sabrin, the latest turn in the campaign has caused several leaders to make one last push for a Senate candidate.

The reemergence of Pennacchio’s controversial 1991 booklet yesterday as a campaign issue has worried the party leaders who were already reluctant to get on board with Pennacchio, and they have renewed their efforts to find an alternate candidate. Although the existence of the book was known to many party leaders, many had not read it until Sabrin released it yesterday. Some fear that incumbent Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg will have a field day with the material, leading to a Lautenberg landslide that could spell trouble for their down-ballot candidates.

“We’re still fishing, we just haven’t gotten a fish,” said one Republican official who wished to remain anonymous. “We’ve got a lot of bait in the water.”

It’s a valid concern, according to Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murray.

“This is how Democrats win landslide elections in New Jersey -- by having the ability to paint the Republicans as ideologically out of touch with the state,” said Murray, who noted two statewide races in which Democrats were able to successfully portray their opponents as ideologues: Democrat Jim Florio did against Republican Jim Courter in 1989, as did Democrat Jim McGreevey against Republican Brett Schundler in 2001.

With just twenty days to go before the April 7 filing deadline, a group of New Jersey Republican leaders are actively searching for another United States Senate candidate to challenge State Sen. Joseph Pennacchio and Ramapo College Professor Murray Sabrin in the June GOP primary.  The race changed considerably two weeks ago when millionaire Anne Evans Estabrook abruptly quit the Senate race after suffering a minor stroke, and with the public disclosure yesterday of Pennacchio’s 1991 nationalist manifesto that has some party leaders in a panic.

Sources say that several GOP leaders approached State Sen. Diane Allen to run; Allen has been recovering from pneumonia and has reportedly declined. 

Senator Diane Allen (R-7) issued the following statement today regarding her ongoing bout of pneumonia:

"I would like to thank my friends, family, constituents and colleagues for their thoughts and prayers during my illness. Your kind words and gracious gestures have made all the difference.

Joe Ferriero vs. Loretta Weinberg; Brian Stack vs. Sal Vega; Glenn Paulsen vs. Diane Allen; Glenn Paulsen vs. Mike Warner; Vivian Stringer vs. Don Imus; James E. McGreevey vs. Dina Matos McGreevey; Anthony Coley vs. Ivette Mendez; Dick Codey vs. Ken Zimmerman; Dick Codey vs. George Zoffinger; Kevin O’Toole vs. Kevin Collins; Upendra Chivukula vs. Seema Singh; Karen Kominsky vs. Christie Davis Jackson; Bill Gormley vs. Sonny McCollough; Bill Pascoe vs. Maryannie Harper; Skip Hidlay vs.Ellen Karcher; Izod vs. Prudential; Guy Talarico vs. everybody.

READ THE POLITICKERNJ.COM 2007 YEAR-END REVIEW

Republicans have held Jim Saxton’s House seat continuously since 1884, when George Hires, a GOP State Senator from Salem County, ousted one-term Democratic Congressman Thomas Ferrell by 1,742 votes.  Now, after four weeks of considerable drama and many surprises, the GOP candidate to hold this open seat against Democrat John Adler, the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, may be decided in a June Republican primary between Medford Deputy Mayor Christopher Myers, a Lockheed-Martin executive, and Ocean County Freeholder John Kelly. 

Newly-elected Burlington County GOP Chairman Bill Layton
In an act that became inevitable when a state superior court judge abruptly reversed his decision from earlier in the week, the Burlington County Republican Committee elected Bill Layton as their new party chairman at a special meeting on Saturday.

The unanimous vote proclaimed party unity, but the mood in the room bore an undercurrent of anxiety, which the new chairman attempted to dissipate in his acceptance speech.

"Friends," Layton told the crowd of 300 in the Wyndham Hotel in Mount Laurel, "families fight. They fight all the time. But they leave their house unified, and they go and fight with the neighbors."