Harry Randall

Incumbent legislators who ran for Governor, left to right: Assemblyman Rick Merkt (R-Mendham), State Sen. Raymond Garramone (D-Haworth), and State Sen. Gerald Cardinale (R-Demarest)

If Assemblyman Richard Merkt (R-Mendham) continues to poll in the one percent range, he could set the record for the worst showing by a sitting state legislator in a gubernatorial primary.  The record is currently held by Raymond Garramone (D-Haworth), a one-term State Senator from Bergen County who gave up his seat to challenge Brendan Byrne in the 1977 Democratic primary.  With 6,602 votes statewide, Garramone finished sixth in a field of eleven candidates, with 1.1% of the vote. 

Garramone was the 46-year-old Mayor of Haworth when he rode Byrne's 1973 coattails to an upset win in the heavily Republican 39th district over Harry Randall, a former Assemblyman and the father of BPU Commissioner Elizabeth Randall. 

When Garramone gave up his Senate seat to run for Governor, Republicans were confident of a pickup in District 39.  But Democrats held the seat when Frank Herbert, a Bergen County Freeholder and former Waldwick Mayor, beat Republican Assemblyman John Markert. 

Markert's running mate, Demarest Mayor Gerald Cardinale, lost his bid for an Assembly seat that year.  Cardinale came back to win in 1979, and moved up to the Senate when he defeated Herbert in 1981.  (When Cardinale sought the GOP nomination for Governor in 1989, he won 8.3% of the vote.)

If Valerie Vainieri Huttle wins the 37th district Assembly seat in a special convention scheduled -- for now -- on Thursday evening, she would become the third woman to follow her father to the New Jersey General Assembly: Anthony Vainieri represented Hudson County in the Assembly from 1984 to 1986. Others: Elizabeth Randall, who served in the Assembly from 1985 to 1991 (she presently serves on the Bergen County Board of Freeholders with Huttle and served in the Assembly with her father), is the daughter of Harry Randall, Jr., who was a Bergen County Assemblyman for six years in the 1960's.; and Assemblywoman Alison McHose, whose father, Robert Littell, served in the Assembly from 1968 until his election to the State Senate in 1990.