Helen Meyner

Lafayette College Special Collections & College Archives Photo

Helen Meyner campaigns for Congress in 1974. The former First Lady's bid to unseat freshman U.S. Rep. Joseph Maraziti was the first campaign for Don Herche, a pollster and consultant who passed away last night

Democratic pollster Don Herche, who passed away last night, began his political career in 1974 as a young staffer on the campaign of Democrat Helen Stevenson Meyner, the former First Lady of New Jersey who was a candidate for Congress in a heavily Republican district.

The story of Meyner's congressional campaign actually begins four years earlier when Republicans cut a deal to clear the field for GOP State Chairman Nelson Gross in the race for U.S. Senate.  One potential primary rival, Morris County State Sen. Joseph Maraziti, dropped his statewide bid with the promise that he would chair the committee that drew new congressional districts after the 1970 census.

Maraziti drew what became known as the Maraziti district: a Democratic House seat in Hudson County was eliminated (forcing two incumbents to face off in a primary), and replaced with a new seat in northwestern New Jersey that included Hunterdon, Sussex and Warren counties, part of Morris, and a small part of western Mercer.  The district was so Republican that Richard Nixon carried it with 70% of the vote against George McGovern.  (In 2008, Republican House candidates won 64% of the vote in the towns that make up the old thirteenth district.)

As a candidate for Congress, the 60-year-old Maraziti won 50% in the GOP primary, defeating Sussex Assemblyman Walter Keough-Dwyer (25%) and Mercer Assemblyman Karl Weidel (17%). 

In the general election, Maraziti faced Meyner, 43, a cousin of Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson and the wife of Robert Meyner, who served as Governor from 1954 to 1962.  Maraziti won 56%-43%.

As a freshman Congressman, Maraziti won a seat on the House Judiciary Committee, which put him in the national spotlight as a staunch defender of Nixon.  He voted against all three articles of impeachment.   Meyner decided to run again in 1974.

Her campaign, the one Herche worked on, was helped by the disclosure that Maraziti put his girlfriend, 35-year-old Linda Collinson, on his congressional payroll in a no-show job  -- one of the highest salaries on his staff -- while she worked at a Whippany law firm.  Collinson was outed when she applied for a loan with the House credit union and a staffer who answered the phone in Maraziti's office said she had never heard of her.  Real estate records also listed the house where Collinson lived as owned by Maraziti.

Late in the campaign, the Hackettstown Star-Gazette fired their managing editor, Donald Thatcher, after the Meyner campaign pointed out that Maraziti put Thatcher on his congressional payroll to write press releases.  Nicholas DeRienzo, who was the general manager of two northwestern New Jersey radio stations, WCRV and WFMV-FM, was also put on Maraziti's payroll.

Democratic pollster Donald Herche passed away last night.  He was the owner of Public Opinion Research, Inc., a Maryland-based polling company that did work for New Jersey Democratic candidates. 

A graduate of Drew University, Herche started out in New Jersey politics during Helen Meyner's successful campaign for Congress against incumbent Joseph Maraziti in 1974.  Herche later joined Meyner's congressional staff as communications director, and helped run her 1976 re-election campaign against Republican Bill Schluter. 

If Linda Stender wins her race against Leonard Lance, she would become just the sixth woman to represent New Jersey in the U.S. House of Representatives since the ratification of the 19th Ammendment in 1920 -- and just the second to go without beating an incumbent.

Four of New Jersey's five Congresswomen went to Washington after defeating an incumbent: Mary Norton, a Hudson County Freeholder who went to Congress in 1924 when she defeated incumbent John Eagan in the Democratic primary with the backing of Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague; Florence Dwyer, an Assemblywoman from Elizabeth, who ousted two-term Democrat Harrison Williams in 1956; Helen Meyner, the former First Lady of New Jersey, who beat freshman Republican Joseph Maraziti in 1974; and former Ridgewood Board of Education President Marge Roukema, who unsteated three-term Democrat Andrew Maguire in 1980.

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:

Arthur Albohn, who passed away on Sunday at the age of 86, was the last person to defeat an incumbent member of the State Assembly in a Morris County general election.  He did it in 1979, when he ousted Democrat Rosemarie Totaro by 3,088 votes.  (The last person to defeat an incumbent State Senator in Morris County was Anthony Bucco, who unseated Gordon MacInnes in 1997.  MacInnes had beaten John Dorsey four years earlier. 

As Camille Andrews embarks upon a congressional campaign that may or not be a placeholder candidacy, she might consider the recent history of wives running for office while their husbands are also running.

When Nevada Congressman Jim Gibbons ran for Governor in 2006, his wife, Dawn Gibbons, ran for his open House seat.  She finished third in the GOP primary with 25% of the vote, and Jim Gibbons narrowly won the GOP primary. And in 2002, Arkansas First Lady Janet Huckabee ran for Secretary of State and lost 62%-38% in the same election her husband, Mike Huckabee, was re-elected Governor by a 53%-47% margin.

Back in 1972, when legislators still drew congressional districts with the consent of the Governor -- and when the GOP controlled state government -- court mandated redistricting led to the creation of a new Republican district in northwestern New Jersey at the expense of a Democratic district in Hudson County.