Frank Guarini

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.

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.

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.

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.

If Albio Sires wins the 13th district congressional seat -- as he is widely expected to do -- he will become the first former Assembly Speaker to go to Congress in thirty years. The last was Joseph LeFante, a Bayonne Democrat, who won a House seat in 1976 when Congressman Dominick Daniels retired. LeFante lasted one term; he was replaced by the Hudson County Democratic Organization in 1978 by Frank Guarini, a former State Senator. Before LeFante, the last Speaker-turned-Congressman was Charles Wolverton, a Republican from Camden County who served in Congress from 1926 to 1958. The last Senate President to win a seat in Congress was Edwin Forsythe; the Burlington County Republican served in the House from 1971 until his death in 1984.

Meaningless trivia: The last state legislative speaker to serve as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives was Tip O'Neill. The Massachusetts Democrat was serving as Speaker of the State House of Representatives in 1952 when John F. Kennedy gave up his House seat to run for the U.S. Senate.

Twenty years after a Democrat named Guarini beat a Republican named Sires for a Hudson County-based seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, a Republican named Guarini may face a Democrat named Sires. In 1986, Albio Sires was the Republican challenger in a race against Democratic Congressman Frank Guarini. Sires lost that race, but went on to win election as a West New York Commissioner, Mayor, and after switching parties, to the State Assembly. He is now making his second bid for Congress, this time against Republican John Guarini, the Chairman of the Jersey City 9/11 Memorial Committee. He works for the Jersey City Housing Code Department and was a political ally of the late Mayor Glenn Cunningham. Guarini was among a group of Hudson County Democrats who endorsed George W. Bush in 2004.

Sires is the favorite to win the House seat left vacant earlier this year when Robert Menendez was appointed to the U.S. Senate. His main challenger for the nomination, Perth Amboy Mayor/Assemblyman Joseph Vas, did not file to run in the Special Election to fill the last two months of Menendez's term. That means it's possible for Sires to win the primary contest for the special election, but not the one for the full two-year term. If that happened, Sires would have to resign his Assembly seat and his mayoral post to spent two months as a Congressman.

In August, Governor-elect Jon Corzine contributed $2,600 to Albio Sires' campaign for Congress -- a campaign that only takes place if Corzine appoints Bob Menendez to the United States Senate. Corzine gave Sires $500 on August 7th and then another $2,100 eleven days later.