Harold Hollenbeck

The newest recipient of the Neil Romano Award for scamming a Bergen County political organization goes to Carmen Pio Costa, who convinced Republicans to nominate him for State Assembly in the potentially competitive 36th district by promising to raise money from his wealthy family.  For the second consecutive cycle, Pio Costa, the son of a millionaire developer/philanthropist from Morris County, has not come through; his individual and joint accounts show about $7,500 raised.

The last winner of the Neil Romano Award was Democrat Paul Stuart Aronsohn in his 2006 campaign for Congress.

One of the legendary scams in Bergen County politics came in 1984, when Republicans were considering candidates to take on newly-elected Democratic Congressman Robert Torricelli. Torricelli had won the seat two years earlier, when he ousted three-term GOP incumbent Harold Hollenbeck by a 53%-46% margin. The political climate in 1982 (and congressional redistricting in the 9th) favored Democrats and Torricelli leveraged the national contacts he made working for Vice President Walter Mondale and running Jimmy Carter's 1980 re-election campaign in Illinois to help him raise $266,000 -- about $70,000 more than Hollenbeck had.

Ronald Reagan's popularity heading into the 1984 election, and a new congressional map (the '82 redistricting plan was tossed by federal judges), gave Republicans reason to believe Torricelli could be beaten. The 9th district went strongly for Reagan, giving him a 59%-41% win over Mondale -- a plurality of almost 47,000 votes.

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Former Assembly Majority Leader Albert Burstein

Two Democratic members of the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission, who may play a critical role in deciding the fate of Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Lonegan, are Trenton veterans who have spent six decades in New Jersey politics.  Both Albert Burstein and Jerry Fitzgerald English have enjoyed successful political careers, although each fell quite short of achieving their full public service ambitions.

Burstein (D-Tenafly), now 86-years-old, was widely viewed as one of the most intellectually superior and independent members of the New Jersey Legislature, where he served from 1972 to 1982, but he was also a late bloomer who fell short in several opportunities to move up.  Burstein started out in politics in 1959 as counsel to the Jersey City Charter Commission and became active in Tenafly politics in the 1960's.  He was elected to the State Assembly in 1971, when legislative redistricting created a new Englewood/Teaneck seat that leaned toward the Democrats.  Running with Byron Baer, Burstein beat Jim O'Dowd (who would later serve as Bergenfield Mayor and Bergen County Freeholder) by 2,335 votes.

When legislative districts were redrawn for the 1973 elections, the newly-created 37th became even more Democratic.  But neither Burstein nor Baer got the chance to challenge the incumbent Republican Senator, Joseph Woodcock.  That opportunity went to Bergen County Democratic Chairman Matthew Feldman, a former Teaneck Mayor who had served in the Senate from 1966 to 1968.  Feldman easily beat Woodcock and Burstein and Baer coasted to win second terms.

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U.S. Rep. Jim Saxton (R-Mt. Holly) will retire tomorrow after 24 years in the U.S. House of Representatives.

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.

Biotech millionaire John Crowley is still mulling a bid for the Republican nomination for Governor.  If he wins, he'd be the first Governor with no previous public sector experience since Woodrow Wilson moved from college president to Governor in 1910.  But in U.S. Senate races, the lack of political experience is more prevalent: New Jersey sent first-time candidates to the Senate in 1942, 1978, 1982 and 2000.

And if you're an extreme political junkie: if Leonard Lance wins a House seat tomorrow, he'll join a fairly elite group -- New Jersey  Congressmen who have served in both the State Senate and General Assembly.  The last ones were Bob Menendez in 1992, Jim Saxton in 1984, Harold Hollenbeck in 1976, Joseph Maraziti in 1972, and Elijah Hutchinson in 1914.

John Adler could be the first Democrat to capture a congressional seat (Jim Saxton's seat) in his district since Thomas Ferrell won in 1882, and Linda Stender, if she wins, she'll be the first Democrat to hold that seat (Mike Ferguson's seat) since Harrison Williams lost to Florence Dwyer in 1956.  New Jersey's House seats, with the last time the other party held them:

New Jersey Republicans have nine non-incumbent candidates for Congress in 2008, the most since 1976 when the state's House delegation had a 12-3 Democratic majority.  For the last decade, New Jersey Democrats have held a 7-6 majority in the House.

Here's a brief history of the party turnover of New Jersey House seats:

Superior Court Judge Harold Hollenbeck will reach the mandatory retirement age of seventy on December 29, possibly ending a career in public service that began with his election to the East Rutherford Borough Council in 1966. But some Republican insiders say that Hollenbeck could be the GOP’s strongest candidate to challenge Bergen County Executive Dennis McNerney in 2010.

Hollenbeck was elected to the State Assembly in 1967, at the age of 29, as part of a Republican sweep of Bergen County in the second mid-term election of Democratic Gov. Richard Hughes. After two terms in the Assembly, he won a State Senate seat in 1971.

One of the reasons Burlington County Republicans picked Christopher Myers, the relatively obscure Mayor of Medford, to succeed Jim Saxton in Congress was his ability to raise money.  When the Lockheed-Martin Vice President entered the race, the buzz among GOP insiders was that he had the ability to compete with State Sen. John Adler in the fundraising department.  Adler has raised $1.9 million in a district where Democrats haven’t won since 1882, and Myers, after a tough primary, has just a little more than $150K on hand.

One of the legendary scams in Bergen County politics came in 1984, when Republicans were considering candidates to take on newly-elected Democratic Congressman Robert Torricelli. Torricelli had won the seat two years earlier, when he ousted three-term GOP incumbent Harold Hollenbeck by a 53%-46% margin. The political climate in 1982 (and congressional redistricting in the 9th) favored Democrats and Torricelli leveraged the national contacts he made working for Vice President Walter Mondale and running Jimmy Carter's 1980 re-election campaign in Illinois to help him raise $266,000 -- about $70,000 more than Hollenbeck had.

The political career of Harold Pareti, a very good natured and popular Bergen County Republican who died on Monday at the age of 85, was ended by the Watergate scandal. Pareti, the longtime Mayor of Carlstadt, was elected to the State Assembly in 1971. He lost his bid for a second term by a wide margin in a Democratic landslide that cost the GOP fourteen Senate seats and 25 Assembly seats in an election that came less than two weeks after the Saturday Night Massacre -- President Richard Nixon's firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. He was unseated by Democrat Robert Hollenbeck, the cousin of the Harold Hollenbeck, the Republican State Senator from that district.

One of the great stories about New Jersey politics in the mid 1970's was the one about Byron Baer and how he came excruciatingly close to winning a congressional seat 28 years ago.

The Congressman from the 9th district was Henry Helstoski, a six-term Democrat with a trademark crew cut who made his mark as an opponent of the Vietnam War. Helstoski was the 39-year-old Mayor of East Rutherford when he beat a nine-term Republican incumbent by 2,428 votes in the Democratic landslide of 1964. Amidst the violence of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Helstoski turned his Chicago hotel room into an infirmary for Eugene McCarthy delegates and volunteers who were injured during the anti-war demonstrations. He ran for Governor in 1969, becoming a candidate just thirty minutes before the filing deadline, and finished second in the Democratic primary for Governor.