James Wallwork

Morris County Freeholder James Murray is thinking about running for Governor.

If 70-year-old Freeholder James Murray enters the race for Governor, it would bring the number of Morris County Republicans to three.  Murray, who raised just $5,000 on his upset primary win over incumbent John Inglesino in 2007, is hardly a first-tier statewide candidate.  But he could siphon off Morris County votes from former U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie - as could another Morris candidate, Assemblyman Richard Merkt (R-Mendham).

Inglesino is part of Christie's political inner circle and has been attending Christie for Governor campaign meetings for more than a year.  He has played a leading role in the reform of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, where his law firm (he is former federal Judge and U.S. Attorney Herbert Stern's law partner) had been awarded a lucrative federal monitor job by Christie.  

The New Jersey Legislature is often the breeding ground for gubernatorial candidates, but by 2009 it will have been 81 years since a sitting state legislator has been elected Governor -- the last time was in 1928, when Morgan Larson, a Republican State Senator from Middlesex County, won.

Over the last fifty years, only four incumbent legislators -- State Senators Malcom Forbes (1957), Wayne Dumont (1965), Raymond Bateman (1977) and James E. McGreevey (1997) -- have won gubernatorial primaries, and all four have lost their general elections.

If Rick Merkt and Chris Christie both wind up in the race for the 2009 Republican nomination for Governor, it will be the first time in 28 years that two former running mates and two candidates from the same small town compete in a statewide primary.  Merkt and Christie, who live in Mendham, ran as a team in the 1995 State Assembly primary in District 25; they lost to incumbent Anthony Bucco and newcomer Michael Patrick Carroll, who was seeking the open seat of retiring Assemblyman Arthur Albohn.   Merkt went to the Assembly two years later when Bucco ran for the State Senate.

In the end, if he has to, Stuart Rabner can get around the senatorial courtesy thing.

Back in 1981, Governor Brendan Byrne appointed labor leader Joel Jacobson to the Casino Control Commission.  The nomination of the South Orange resident was blocked for months by James Wallwork, a Republican State Senator from Essex County.  Wallwork exercised senatorial courtesy because none of the five casino commissioners came from South Jersey.