Donald DiFrancesco

After spending six years working as a private sector lawyer, former Acting Governor and Senate Co-President Donald DiFrancesco wants to get back into public service – perhaps as a board member of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority.

“Would I be interested? Yeah, sure. Will I get it? I’m not sure,” said DiFrancesco. “It’s the other party. He probably has a lot of people who he wants to put on there.”

Six of the last eight Governors of New Jersey launched their political careers by serving in the New Jersey State Assembly: William Cahill, Thomas Kean, James Florio, Donald DiFrancesco, James E. McGreevey, and Richard Codey. With that kind of historical precedent, is it possible that one of the 25 freshmen entering the Assembly on Tuesday could wind up living at Drumthwacket someday?

Thomas Kean, Jr., who officially becomes the Senate Minority Leader on Tuesday, is expected to name James Harkness as the Executive Director of the Senate Republican Office.  Harkness served as Chief Counsel to Governor Donald DiFrancesco and was a top staffer in the State Senate (when the GOP had a majority of seats) before joining Riker Danzig, a politically powerful law firm. 

James Harkness, a former Chief Counsel to Governor Donald DiFrancesco, has emerged as a serious candidate for Executive Director of the Senate Republican Office.  The incoming Minority Leader, Thomas Kean, Jr., has decided to replace John Samerjan, and is now looking at Harkness and John Kingston, the Assembly Republican Research Director, as the most likely replacements. 

Former Hillsborough Deputy Mayor Chris Venis became the first Republican to enter the seventh district House race following Rep. Mike Ferguson’s retirement.

“Every person at some point in their lives has come to a crossroad. A road that will take them to an unknown place: a place full of challenges, and sometimes a place full of huge responsibility. Today it is my turn to choose a path,” Venis said. “Mine is quite simple, to ensure that our children and families have the best opportunity to prosper and live safe healthy lives."

Shocking, just shocking: The Star-Ledger is reporting that “a lawyer who claims she was sexually harassed by former Governor Donald DiFrancesco and fired from his law firm when she ‘blew the whistle’ on bad behavior by a municipal judge filed suit against the firm today.”  In a lawsuit, former Warren Township Municipal Prosecutor Michele D’Onofio says  she was "regularly subjected to unwelcome and sexist comments and advances by Donald DiFrancesco" and "experienced a pattern and practice of sex discrimination.”

A decade ago, there were ten Republicans who dominated politics in their counties: Bill Gormley in Atlantic, Pat Schuber in Bergen, Glenn Paulsen in Burlington, James Treffinger in Essex, Robert Prunetti in Mercer, Harry Larrison in Monmouth, George Gilmore in Ocean, Peter Murphy in Passaic, Dale Florio in Somerset, and Donald DiFrancesco in Union. Today, Democrats have completely overtaken five of those counties, and the Republicans are now playing defense in the other five.

Passaic Mayor Sammy Rivera, arrested today on bribery charges, is no stranger to scandal.

The 60-year-old Rivera joined the Passaic Police Department around 1968, around the time the city's Latino population began to surge. He served on a nine-man Vice Squad that was described by the Herald News in 1970 as "the most feared among any on the entire police force...as far as gamblers and drug violators are concerned."  He later servd on a specia police squad aimed at patrolling the city's most troubled areas.  

In 1970, Rivera was one of eight police officers to face brutality charges.  He never went to trial, and resigned to return to Puerto Rico, where he became a police officer.

One difference between Leonard Lance and the other Senate Republican leaders over the last thirty years is that Lance has never run himself in a competitive general election. His predecessor, John Bennett, began his legislative career by ousting three-term Democratic Assemblyman Walter Kozloski in 1979. Donald DiFrancesco, the Senate President from 1992 to 2002, unseated Democratic Assemblywoman Betty Wilson in 1975, and won a State Senate seat against Joanne Rajoppi, now the Union County Clerk, in a politically competitive district that included Plainfield and Rahway. John Dorsey, who followed DiFrancesco as Senate Minority Leader in 1984, defeated incumbent Democrats Gordon MacInnes and Rosemarie Totaro to win an Assembly seat in 1975, and beat incumbent State Senator Stephen Wiley in 1977. And Thomas Gagliano, who was Minority Leader in the late 1970's, won a competitive race for an open Senate seat in 1977, defeating Marlboro Mayor Arthur Goldzweig in a district that elected one Republican and one Democrat to the Assembly that year.