Eric Munoz

Kean, Rice, Pennacchio, Munoz: Public Policy Regarding Needle Exchange Programs Must Be the Responsibility of the Legislature
Legislators Withdraw Suit Noting Expiration of McGreevey Executive Order

Senator Thomas H. Kean, Jr., Senator Ronald L. Rice, Assemblyman Dr. Joseph Pennacchio, and Assemblyman Dr. Eric Munoz today announced that they had withdrawn their lawsuit challenging the former governor’s right to circumvent the legislative process noting that Governor McGreevey’s 2004 Executive Order instituting a pilot syringe access program in New Jersey had become “null and void� on December 31, 2005.

The other Senate race already taking shape is in the 21st district, where Republican Assemblymen Eric Munoz and Jon Bramnick are already getting their ducks in order in the event that State Senator Tom Kean, Jr. wins the 2006 U.S. Senate race. Kean would resign his Senate seat in January 2007, necessitating a Special Election Convention to fill the remaining year of his current term. Munoz and Bramnick are no strangers to the Special Election Convention -- that's the way each of them got to the Legislature in the first place: Munoz won in 2001 when Kevin O'Toole replaced Louis Bassano in the State Senate; Bramnick won in 2003 when Kean took Richard Bagger's Senate seat -- he defeated Phil Morin, now the Union County Republican Chairman, by just three votes. Republicans say this contest would be decided a the convention and that the winner would be unlikely to receive a challenge in the June primary. The elevation of one of the two Assemblymen would, of course, trigger another Special Election Convention for an open Assembly seat -- the fourth in this district in five years.