Jim Saxton

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman John Adler has raised $1,159,310 for his congressional campaign, including $529,320 during the first quarter of 2008 – with nearly 75% of his contributions coming from New Jersey residents. Adler is the presumptive Democratic nominee on one of the nation’s most hotly-contested House races, District 3, where twelve-term Republican Congressman Jim Saxton is retiring.

When Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) announced his retirement last month, Democrats reacted with glee and optimism at the prospect of running a competitive race for the open seat, especially with a candidate, Bob Lord, who had raised $600,000.

That hopefulness was dampened, however, when Shadegg reneged on his decision just 10 days later -- after entreaties from 130 congressional colleagues and letters from conservative supporters who begged him to reconsider.

Two Republicans say that's not going to happen here.

Regardless of the chances that their seats will turn from red to blue, Reps. Jim Saxton and Mike Ferguson say that there's no chance they'll pull a Shadegg.

GOP congressional candidate Jack Kelly has ticked off the man he wants to replace by suggesting in a Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board meeting that retiring twelve-term Republican Congressman Jim Saxton is interfering in the primary campaign.  Saxton says Kelly’s charge is “borderline absurd.”

GOP congressional candidate Christopher Myers won endorsements from the five Republicans on the Tabernacle Township Committee – significant because one of Myers’ primary rivals, Justin Murphy, served with three of the local officials during his three years as Township Committeeman and Tabernacle Deputy Mayor. Mayor Kim Brown and Township Committeemen Joe Yates, Richard Franzen, Kenneth Baranowski and Noble McNaughton announced their support of Myers on Friday.

In a solidly Republican House district in Illinois, Democrat Bill Foster won a special election to replace ex-House Speaker Dennis Hastert.  He defeated Jim Oberweis by a 52%-48% margin in a race managed by two onetime New Jersey political operatives.  Foster's race was run by Tom Bowen, who managed campaigns for Paul Moriarty and David Mayer in 2003, while the Oberweis campaign was headed by Bill Pascoe, who ran campaigns for Bret Schundler, Douglas Forrester and Nicholas Asselta.

Does Bill Foster’s victory in Illinois District 14 provide insight into the competitive U.S. House races in Districts 3 and 7?

According to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, it does.

In 1958, Democrat Alexander Feinberg and former GOP Assemblyman William Cahill faced off in the old first district for the seat of Republican Charles Wolverton, who was retiring after 32 years in Congress. A Democratic year nationally, Cahill held on for a 1,829 vote victory, 50%-49%. Had Cahill lost his congressional race, he probably would not have won election as Governor in 1969.  (Feinberg, a Cherry Hill Democrat, became friends with the Senate candidate that year, Harrison Williams.  More than two decades later, when Williams was indicted in the Abscam scandal, Feinberg was a co-defendant.)

The other race was a 1953 Special Election for the seat of Republican Clifford Case, who had resigned during his ninth year in office to become the president of The Fund for the Republic. (Case returned to politics one year later to win the U.S. Senate seat of retiring freshman GOP Senator Robert Hendrickson). Most observers at the time expected the Republican, Plainfield Mayor George Hetfield, to easily win Case's congressional seat. His Democratic opponent was a 33-year-old lawyer and World War II veteran who had already lost races for State Assembly in 1951 and Plainfield City Councilman in 1952, Harrison Williams.

Third district congressional candidate Christopher Myers has dropped Jamestown Associates as his campaign consultant – just a week after Jamestown scored a major victory in Maryland where their client ousted a seven-term incumbent in a GOP primary.

They're not state Senators or gubernatorial offspring. They don't come from political dynasties and don't have powerful county organizations backing them.

But in the third and seventh congressional districts, there are eight lower-profile Republican candidates, considered second-tier to the likes of state Sen. Leonard Lance, Kate Whitman, Medford Mayor Chris Myers and Ocean County Freeholder Director Jack Kelly. And those candidates want to stress that even without a famous name or a powerful county organization behind them, they can have an impact on these races.

One of the longest shot candidates on the ballot in either district is Suzanne Penna, a 37-year-old nursing student from Bayville who's only been involved in politics for the last year and a half. It won't be her first time facing Kelly in a primary.

Jack Kelly and Chris Myers, the two leading candidates for the Republicans’ third district congressional nomination, have both indicated that they plan to keep their primary contest gentlemanly despite strong pushes from each of their counties’ Republican organizations.

“What you don’t want to turn this into is us against them,” Kelly, an Ocean County Freeholder, told PolitickerNJ.com in November. “We need to assure them that the needs of the district come first. Which one of us becomes a successful candidate comes second.”

But are the candidates merely paying lip service to civility this early in the race, or will they actually be able to live up to the idea?

If the 1984 primary race for the seat is any indication -- the last time there was a competitive primary in the district and Burlington and Ocean Counties went head-to-head – then yes, the contest may very well remain civil.

“We had a gentleman’s primary,” said retiring U.S. Rep. Jim Saxton, who went on to narrowly win that primary and then serve 12 consecutive terms in the House. “We debated the issues. Ronald Reagan was a theme of the campaign. He was very popular at the time.”