Donald Payne

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Former Assemblyman William Payne (right, with Gov. Jon Corzine) is not likely to seek his old 29th district seat, but he wants his nephew, former Assemblyman Craig Stanley, to get his old 28th district seat back next year.

Freshman Assemblywoman Cleopatra Tucker is in danger of losing the support of the Essex County Democratic organization if she runs for re-election to a second term in 2009, Democratic sources say.  Part of the deal to keep Assemblywoman Grace Spencer, perhaps Newark Mayor Cory Booker's closest friend in the Legislature, in her 29th district seat is to replace Tucker with former Assemblyman Craig Stanley, who lost his bid for renomination in the June 2007 primary. 

Fomer New Jersey and Essex County Democratic Party Chairman Ray Durkin, and his son, Essex County Clerk Chris Durkin

At Mayfair Farms Restaurant in West Orange on Saturday, the St. Patrick’s Guard of Honor of New Jersey hailed Ray Durkin, or the chairman, as they call him here in a nod of respect to his many years of service to the Democratic Party. 

Full-blooded and hybrid and old and new country Irish fathers and their sons - Giblin, Byrne, Stack, Barrett, McCarthy, Baroni, Mac Donald, O’Toole and Codey – for one afternoon absorbed any and all of New Jersey’s other ethnic groups into the arms of Durkin’s Irish-America.  

Durkin, who led the Essex County Democratic Organization from 1980 to 1992 in addition to serving as chair of the state party from 1985 to 1989, was the 68th St. Patrick’s Guard of Honor on a list going back to 1940 that includes President John F. Kennedy, Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., and governors Richard J. Hughes, Brendan Byrne and Richard Codey.  

In accepting the award, the former Newark City Firefighter and head of the West Ward Young Democrats who has been lowkey politically over the course of the past 12 years, said he was most proud of his wife and five sons, including Essex County Clerk Chris Durkin, who introduced his father on Saturday.

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U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) is expected to receive substantial support from New Jersey Congressmen in his bid for House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman

Today, in his first major vote as an incoming member of the U.S. House of Representatives, John Adler is expected to support Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) for Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, according to sources with close ties to Camden County Democrat.  Waxman is challenging longtime chairman John Dingell, an 82-year-old Michigan Democrat who has served in Congress since 1955. 

Former lawmaker Bill Payne doesn’t know if he’s going to run for his old seat in the Assembly next year against Assemblywoman L. Grace Spencer (D-Newark), but he appears less inclined to make a move than he was this past summer.

Payne’s longtime friend, state Sen. Ronald Rice (D-Newark), told PolitickerNJ.com that he would urge the retired legislator not to pursue a run against Spencer.

“I’m supporting the re-election of every member of the Legislative Black Caucus,” said Rice, including the Mayor Cory Booker-backed Spencer, who won Payne’s South Ward-based seat in last year’s election.

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.

U.S. Rep. Donald Payne (D-Newark)

NEWARK – Surrounded by a core of South Ward supporters, U.S. Rep. Donald Payne (D-Newark) watched the results come in last night and celebrated as he watched Sen. Barack Obama (D-Il.) win.

“I was very pleased with the victory and I’m also pleased that some of the concerns I had have been calmed a bit,” he said.

At the Democratic National Convention in August, Payne felt confident about Obama’s chances, and predicted the only potential barrier to an Obama victory would be race.

The Wall Street meltdown removed that as an issue, in the congressman’s view.

PolitickerNJ.com is projecting Democrat Donald Payne as the winner in New Jersey's 10th congressional district.  Payne, first elected in 1988, faces Socialist Workers Party candidate Michael Taber in today's election.

It’s not exactly a surprise, but the incumbent Congressmen in safe districts who have statewide aspirations tend to have the largest war chests.

Take, for instance, U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch).  His Republican opponent, former Judge Robert McLeod, didn’t even raise the $5,000 that would require him to fill out a report with the Federal Election Commission.  But Pallone is raising and spending money anyway, raking in $302,139 last quarter for a total of $2.18 million this election cycle.  He has $3.36 million on hand – the largest war chest in Congress – and spent $304,000 this quarter.

That money is not being spent against McLeod.  The expenditures listed in the FEC report includes a $189,015 cable television ad buy.  The commercial, which began on Tuesday, is playing all over the state north of Interstate 195, in places well beyond Pallone’s district.

Lautenberg rallies with Bikers for Obama: Politicker photoWEST ORANGE - The leather-clad bikers roared into the parking lot, revving overtime - and they kept coming, motley in motion, mufflers drowning out the after effects of rhetoric, the noise near to deafening - as a senatorial figure with a shock of white hair practically broke from his handlers and strode down among them.

He looked so senatorial, in fact, that - was it actually...

Yes, it was definitely 84-year old U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park) emerging from the opening of the Obama campaign’s West Orange headquarters and personally welcoming a newly formed Essex County club, Bikers for Obama, which this morning numbered about 200 strong.

U.S. Rep. Donald Payne (D-Newark) joined the senator, jumping aboard a Harley as one of the bikers outfitted Lautenberg with a leather vest.

County Chairman Phil Thigpen: Politicker photo 

NEWARK - It was appropriate that their office should stand across the street from the War Memorial. Sized up as a group, they were the veterans of a lot of Essex County wars.

The office setting, too, underscored tough times, like a set-piece out of "Glengarry Glen Ross.".

A former Countrywide home loan office that went belly up in a bad economy, this storefront a few doors down from the Robert Treat Hotel now houses the county’s Obama campaign headquarters, which officially opened Monday.

"You could say we’re one good thing to come out of them going out of business," said West Ward Councilman Ronald C. Rice, county campaign coordinator, standing in the split level, nearly wallpapered over now with Obama campaign signs.