George McGovern

Former Vice President Al Gore will be in New Jersey today, lending a hand to Gov. Jon Corzine's re-election by addressing an annual meeting of Democrats in Atlantic City.  Gore becomes the second of the eight living Democratic nominees for President to stump for Corzine; Barack Obama was in the state last July.  Democrats expect two others to be in New Jersey over the next few weeks: former President Bill Clinton, and U.S. Sen. John Kerry.  There are no plans for any of the other four onetime Democratic standard bearers to campaign for Corzine: George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis.

There are four living Republican presidential candidates.  It's almost certain that former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush will not campaigning for GOP gubernatorial candidate Christopher Christie.  There is no word if Bob Dole or John McCain will be visiting New Jersey before November.

Gore also puts in checkmark under the living former Vice Presidents column. It seems certain that Christie won't ask Dick Cheney to come to New Jersey this fall - the heavy traffic on Route 1 notwithstanding. There are no apparent invitations for Mondale or Dan Quayle to stump for Corzine or Christie, respectively.

Vice President Joseph Biden appeared at a Corzine rally on the night of the Democratic primary.

Of the other five living former VP candidates, three almost certainly will not be invited: Sarah Palin, John Edwards, and Joseph Lieberman.  Sargent Shriver has health issues and is no longer making public appearances. That leaves Geraldine Ferraro, and there is a decent chance the Corzine campaign won't want her.

One of Robert Novak's last public appearances was at an Americans for Prosperity Summit in New Jersey last year. Novak is shown meeting with some conservative bloggers.

Journalist Robert Novak, who died today of brain cancer at age 78, was a central figure in American politics for parts of six decades. 

One of the most memorable stories about the conservative columnists influence on presidential elections was in 1972, when Novak quoted an unnamed Democratic U.S. Senator as saying: "The people don't know McGovern is for amnesty, abortion and legalization of pot.  Once Middle America - Catholic Middle America, in particular - finds this out, he's dead."  Novak's label of McGovern as the "amnesty, abortion and acid" candidate stuck, and the Democratic presidential candidate was never able to win the votes of conservative Democrats and Independents who went in huge numbers for Richard Nixon.

For New Jersey Democrats, there was never a better year than 1973.  Republicans ousted their incumbent Governor, moderate William Cahill, in the primary and replaced him with Charles Sandman, a conservative Congressman.  Democrats, helped by the Watergate scandal in Washington (two weeks before the general election, Richard Nixon fired the Watergate special prosecutor in what was called "The Saturday Night Massacre") and the criminal conviction of top GOP officeholders in New Jersey, won the governorship by 721,378 votes (68%-32%).  Brendan Byrne won every county but Cape May - Sandman's home county.  Sandman's defeat was the worst for a Republican in New Jersey history.

Democrats picked up thirteen State Senate seats and 26 Assembly seats, leaving the Legislature with ten Republicans in the Senate and fourteen in the Assembly.  Only four legislative districts out of forty elected Republicans to the Senate and both Assembly seats; 36 districts sent at least one Democrat to the Legislature, including Hunterdon, Ocean, Morris, Sussex and Warren counties.

Getty Images Photo

Four years after Richard Nixon carried N.J. by a 2-1 margin, more New Jerseyans claimed to have voted for George McGovern than Nixon.

Two weeks after leaving office, New Jerseyans give George W. Bush an upside-down 25%-69% approval rating - horrible numbers, but substantially better than the 18%-78% he had in a November Quinnipiac University poll.  In November, for the first time in his presidency, he was upside down (45%-48%) among Republicans.  Today's Quinnipiac poll has his GOP approvals at 58%-33%, a major shift.

The last poll had Bush's approvals in New Jersey lower than Richard Nixon's were in May 1974, three months before the Watergate scandal forced his resignation. Nixon was upside-down at 19%-76%.  Among Republicans, Nixon was at 46%-44%.

With the death of former U.S. Senator James Pearson (R-Kansas) on January 13, 2009 at age 88, New Jersey's Frank Lautenberg moves up to 20th on the list of the oldest current and former members of the world's most exclusive club: the United States Senate.

A quick look at several old New Jersey presidential polls taken (mostly) in September:

Sarah Palin may be the first vice presidential candidate since Sargent Shriver to enter a national campaign without ever taking a campaign contribution from a single New Jerseyan – and that’s because Shriver had never run for office before George McGovern picked him in 1972.  According to reports filed with the Alaska Public Offices Commission (their version of the Election Law Enforcement Commission), Palin received no contributions from New Jersey residents in her bids for Governor, or for Mayor or Councilwoman in Wasilla.

Frank Lautenberg made the White House Enemies List when he backed George McGovern for President in 1972
DENVER - A glance at the 1972 Democratic National Convention might put things in perspective for those Democrats who think the party is irreconcilably divided between Camp Hillary and Obamaland.

After liberal Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota won his party’s nomination for president that year, primary loser Alabama Gov. George Wallace refused to support him, taking southern segregationists on an embittered exodus out of the party.

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park) remembers that convention, and he recalls firmly backing McGovern.

"My support for McGovern earned me a spot on Richard Nixon’s enemies list," Lautenberg told PolitickerNJ.com.

In the final days of Eugene McCarthy’s campaign for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination – when Hubert Humphrey appeared to have the votes to win following the assassination of Robert Kennedy and George McGovern’s last-minute replacement candidacy never took hold – McCarthy released a list of possible cabinet appointments.  He had narrowed his choice for U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development down to two choices: Governor Richard Hughes of New Jersey and Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York.

There was a changing of the guard among liberals in Princeton last night in a race for President of the Princeton Community Democratic Organization, a group of Democrats from Princeton Borough and Princeton Township. Jenny Crumiller, a fundraiser for Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign and a Democracy for America member, defeated Dick Bergman, who got his start in politics working for Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, by 156-59 margin. Bergman, who worked as a budget analyst for the New Jersey Legislature and spent thre years working in the Carter White House, had been the handpicked candidate of Princeton Township Mayor Phyllis Marchand. With more than 350 members, the PCDO is the largest local Democratic club in Mercer County.