Frank Guarini

Gov. Jon Corzine faces just token opposition in the Democratic primary, although some pundits are watching to see if a significant number of Democrats - perhaps more than twenty percent of them - vote against him anyway.  In what is more of a race for second place, three other Democrats are running for Governor: Carl Bergmanson, a former Mayor of Glen Ridge; Roger Bacon, a factory worker who runs a customized ceramic mug business; and Jeff Boss, who claims to have witnessed the U.S. government planning the 9/11 terrorist attack. 

There are reports that some public employee unions are, very quietly, suggesting that their members vote for Bergmanson.  Their hope is that the vote totals of today's primary could influence Corzine over the next 28 days. 

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As he endorsed Christopher Christie for the 2009 GOP gubernatorial nomination on Wednesday, former Governor Thomas Kean, Sr. reminded reporters that the only other time he involved himself in a Republican Primary was when his son ran for the U.S. Senate three years ago.   That's not completely accurate.  During his second term as Governor, Kean went to Hudson County to endorse Albio Sires, a Republican activist from West New York who had been recruited by state Republicans to challenge U.S. Rep. Frank Guarini (D-Jersey City) in 1986.  Sires was facing a primary challenge from one of two Republicans on the Hudson County Board of Freeholders.

At the time, Republicans believed they were looking at a possible political realignment in Hudson County.  They had won two Freeholder seats in 1984 and four Assembly seats in 1985.  Ronald Reagan carried Hudson in 1984, and Kean won every town in the county when he ran for re-election in 1985.  The GOP was playing heavily in non-partisan municipal races that year, and was counting on electing a Republican Mayor of Union City, where Assemblyman Ronald Dario (R-Union City) was heading a local ticket - financed by the GOP - that included a young lawyer named Robert Menendez.

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Only twice have incumbent statewide officeholders lost primary elections.  They were both Republicans: in 1973, U.S. Rep. Charles Sandman defeated Governor William Cahill by a 58%-41% margin; and in 1978, when four-term U.S. Senator Clifford Case lost to Jeffrey Bell, a 35-year-old former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, by a 51%-49% margin.

In 1977, Governor Brendan Byrne had ten opponents in the Democratic primary, including two Congressmen, a State Senator, and his own Commissioner of Labor.  Byrne won with 30% of the vote; U.S. Rep. Robert Roe came in second with 23%.

The most high profile primary against an incumbent came in 2008, when 84-year-old U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg faced a major challenge from U.S. Rep. Robert Andrews.  Lautenberg won 59% of the vote in the Democratic primary, with 35% for Andrews and 6% for Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello. 

Lautenberg has faced two minor challenges as an incumbent.  He won 81% against Bill Campbell and Lynne Speed in 1994 and 80% against Elnardo Webster (the father of a powerful Democratic lawyer) and Harold Young in 1988.

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U.S. Rep. Albio Sires (D-West New York) was named Third Vice Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) today.  Sires will serve as Vice Chair for Member Participation and Outreach and will focus on a plan to use Democratic Congressmen as surrogates in targeted districts and outreach to interest groups.

Going into the 2010 midterm elections, there are 83 Democrats holding Republicans districts and six Republicans in Democratic districts.

 "Congressman Sires is a strategic thinker who has the respect and relationships within our Caucus and with our allies to encourage the active political participation of our Members throughout the cycle," said U.S. Rep. Christopher Van Hollen (D-MD), the DCCC Chairman.

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When Jim Saxton and Mike Ferguson leave Congress tomorrow, New Jersey will have nineteen living former Congressmen.  The oldest is Peter H.B. Frelinghuysen, the 93-year-old father of U.S. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen.  He first won an open seat in 1952 and served until his retirement in 1974.  The youngest is the soon-to-be-unemployed Michael Pappas, 48, a Republican who won an open seat in 1996 and lost his bid for re-election to a second term two years later.  Pappas works for the Small Business Administration and will likely lose his job when the new administration takes office this month.

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Robert Menendez continues to be a trailblazer: the first hispanic Mayor of Union City, the first hispanic N.J. State Senator, the first hispanic Congressman from New Jersey, the first hispanic to serve in the House Democratic leadership, the first hispanic United States Senator from New Jersey, the first hispanic to win a statewide nomination and general election in New Jersey, and now the first hispanic to serve as Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Read More >

In New Jersey, incumbent United States Senators have rarely faced competitive primary challenges, and the only incumbent Senator to lose a primary was Clifford Case, a four-term Republican who lost 50.7%-49.3% to conservative Jeffrey Bell, a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan’s 1976 presidential campaign.  Case had faced primary challenges from the right before: Robert Morris, who had been Chief Counsel for Senate Internal Security Subcommittee headed by Joseph McCarthy, won 33% in 1960; and James Walter Ralph, a Bergen County physician, received 30% in 1972.

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New Jersey Democrats haven’t had a real statewide primary in eight years – the last time was in 2000, when newcomer Jon Corzine beat former Governor Jim Florio’s South Jersey-based coalition in the U.S. Senate primary by a 58%-42% margin.

In the eleven primaries since Democrats last lost a U.S. Senate race in 1972, eight of them have been virtually uncontested. In 1978, basketball star Bill Bradley beat the establishment choice, State Treasurer Richard Leone, by a 59%-26% margin, with ex-State Sen. Alexander Menza receiving 9%. And in 1982, newcomer Frank Lautenberg won a ten candidate primary with 26% of the vote against former Reps. Andrew Maguire (23%) and Joseph LeFante (20%), and Princeton Mayor Barbara Boggs Sigmund (11%). Six other candidates – businessman Howard Rosen, former state Banking Commissioner Angelo Bianchi, Passaic County Freeholder Cyril Yannarelli, labor leader Frank Forst, Richard McAleer, and Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello combined for the remaining votes. Cresitello, who is running again this year, finished last with 4,295 votes statewide.

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Joseph Doria becomes the first former Assembly Speaker to serve in the Governor's cabinet since Joseph LeFante, also a resident of Bayonne, became Brendan Byrne's Commissioner of Community Affairs in 1978.  LeFante became Speaker in 1976 and helped Byrne shepherd the state income tax through the Assembly.

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Political grudges don't always last forever.  Look at Albio Sires and Frank Guarini.  When Sires, a young West New York gadfly, was the Republican candidate for Congress in 1986, he hurled some fairly heavy criticism of Guarini, then a four-term Democratic Congressman.  But more than twenty years later, Sires is now a loyal Democrat, and yesterday he praised Guarini's fourteen years in Congress when he introduced a bill to name a post office in Jersey City after his onetime rival.

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