The outcome of the 2009 campaign for Governor of New Jersey is not historically significant to Barack Obama's presidency. It is almost twice as likely that New Jerseyans elect a governor who is not a member of the president's party.  Indeed, the party of the incumbent president is 15-26 in New Jersey gubernatorial races since a Democrat won in Abraham Lincoln's mid-term election.

The last five gubernatorial elections went that way: Republicans lost in 1989 (George H.W. Bush), 2001 and 2005 (George W. Bush), and Democrats lost in 1993 and 1997 (Bill Clinton). But in the seven contests before that, the party of the sitting president went 6-1: Republicans won in 1969 (Richard Nixon), 1981, and 1985 (Ronald Reagan), and Democrats won in 1961 (John Kennedy), 1965 (Lyndon Johnson), and 1977 (Jimmy Carter); Republicans lost in 1973, after the incumbent was defeated in the primary and in an election that was held under the backdrop of the Watergate scandal.

None those twelve campaigns influenced the outcomes of the next presidential campaign, either nationally or in pursuit of New Jersey's electoral votes - although the 1973 results were a harbinger of the 1974 Democratic landslide.  By 1976, New Jersey was supporting a Republican presidential candidate.

Democrats won both gubernatorial elections held during Dwight Eisenhower's presidency, and Republicans won both governors' races held while Harry Truman was president.  During the four campaigns for governor that occurred during Franklin Roosevelt's tenure in the White House, Democrats won two (1937 and 1940) and lost two (1934 and 1943).  Eisenhower carried New Jersey twice, and Roosevelt won the state four times.

Republican Norman Roth, a 40-year-old lawyer for the Jersey City Board of Education, came with 57 votes of winning a seat in Congress in 1956, but fortunately for the incumbent, Jersey City came through with a few extra votes for the Democratic incumbent after the polls had closed.  This was one of the closest House races in New Jersey history.

Roth's bid to unseat U.S. Rep. Alfred Sieminski, 45, benefitted greatly by the coattails of President Dwight Eisenhower, who carried Hudson County in his re-election campaign against Adlai Stevenson.  Two years earlier, Sieminski, a veteran of World War II and Korea who went to Princeton and Harvard Law School, won a third term in Congress with an easy 61%-27% victory over Roth. 

In another Hudson district, Republican Vincent Dellay upset Democratic U.S. Rep. James Tumulty by a 52%-46% margin.  Tummulty was the nephew of Joseph Tumulty, a former Assemblyman who was Woodrow Wilson's Chief of Staff (in those days, the job was called Secretary) in the Governor's office and in the White House.

Seeking his first term in 1954, the 41-year-old Tummulty, a former Assembly Minority Leader who later became Secretary to the Mayor of Jersey City, beat Dellay, 62%-35%.  Dellay, 47, was state Treasury Department auditor,

Hoping for a second term as the Congressman from Hudson County, Dellay switched parties; the Hudson County Democratic Organization denied him party support and instead sent 50-year-old Dominick Daniels, a Jersey City Municipal Court Judge, to Congress. 

The 2008 New Jersey presidential primary set a voter turnout records the Democrats. Over 1.1 million Democrats cast their votes in the early, unusually relevant, New Jersey primary.

In the last three presidential elections where New Jersey’s Democratic primary was held before any candidate won a majority of votes, the turnout was considerably less: 676,561 in 1984, 527,496 in 1980, and 360,835 in 1976.

Henry Alexander Smith represented New Jersey in the U.S. Senate from 1944 to 1959.H. Alexander Smith was a late bloomer in New Jersey politics. Born in New York, he spent twelve years practicing law in Colorado Springs (his nephew, Peter Dominick, was the Senator from Colorado before losing his seat to Gary Hart in 1974) and worked at the U.S. Food Administration in Washington during World War II. He moved to New Jersey at age 39 to become Executive Secretary of Princeton University, and was elected New Jersey's Republican National Committeeman 23 years later.

After U.S. Senator Warren Barbour died in office at the end of 1943, Smith decided to run for the United States Senate. He was 64-years-old when he defeated Congressman Elmer Wene, a onetime chicken farmer from Cumberland County, by 25,725 votes -- a 50%-49% margin. He was re-elected in 1946 (by nearly nineteen percentage points against Camden Mayor George Brunner) and again in 1952, by a 56%-44% margin over Archibald Alexander.