Jimmy Carter

If Barack Obama wins New Jersey in November, he will become the first candidate to lose the state's presidential primary and still win electoral votes in the general since 1932.  Obama lost the February 5 New Jersey primary to Hillary Clinton by a 54%-44% margin.

In 1932, Alfred E. Smith won the New Jersey Democratic presidential preference primary by a 62%-38% margin over the Governor of New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Smith, the former Governor of New York, had been the Democratic nominee for President in 1928.  In the general, Roosevelt narrowly won New Jersey, 50%-48%, against incumbent Herbert Hoover.

A quick look at several old New Jersey presidential polls taken (mostly) in September:

The Democratic National Convention will be called to order at 5:00 PM EST today, with a theme of "One Nation."  Featured speakers include Michelle Obama, U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL), former President Jimmy Carter, and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, who will introduce a tribute to her uncle, U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA).

Anne Martindell (1914-2008) served in the New Jersey State Senate from 1974 to 1977.Former State Sen. Anne Clark Martindell, a Democrat who won an upset victory in a solidly Republican legislative district in 1973 and went on to become the United States Ambassador to New Zealand, passed away on Wednesday.  She was 93.

Martindell became involved in politics in 1968 when her brother, Blair Clark, was the campaign manager for Eugene McCarthy’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.  She ran for State Senator in a Hunterdon County-based district that included Princeton, Pennington and the Hopewells, and narrowly defeated incumbent Bill Schluter in 1973, when Watergate caused Republicans to lose ten State Senate seats. 

She left the Senate in 1977 when President Jimmy Carter appointed her to serve as an Ambassador.  Her Senate seat was won by Republican Walter Foran.

Bob Decheine probably wouldn’t know how to get from Haworth to Hawthorne, but he’s very much in control of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in New Jersey. His power comes from his day job as Chief of Staff to Congressman Steven Rothman, who has emerged as the leader of the state Obama campaign. And Rothman’s lead in a PolitickerNJ.com online poll of which New Jersey Democrat has the most political power today appears to be the result of Obama’s surge as a national candidate.

U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy will be in New Jersey today, joining Barack Obama for a rally in a state that has become a horse race despite Hillary Clinton’s one-time 34-point lead.  The last two times New Jersey was relevant in the presidential nominating process were in 1980 and 1984.  In the 1980 primary, Kennedy won New Jersey 56%-38% over President Jimmy Carter.  In 1984, Walter Mondale won New Jersey by a 45%-30% margin over Gary Hart, with Jesse Jackson winning 24% of the vote.

During his 1976 presidential campaign against Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter pledged to appoint federal prosecutors "strictly on the basis of merit, without any consideration of political aspect or influence." But after taking office in 1977, Carter sought the resignation of the United States Attorney for New Jersey, Jonathan Goldstein, and replaced him with Robert Del Tufo, who was serving as the Director of the state Division of Criminal Justice.

The 36-year-old Goldstein was part of a trio of career federal prosecutors -- he followed Frederick Lacey and Herbert Stern -- named by Richard Nixon who had waged an aggressive war on public corruption and organized crime. He had sought to complete the final year of his four-year term. Goldstein accused the Carter administration of forcing him from office at the request of Harrison Williams, the Democratic U.S. Senator from New Jersey, telling the New York Times that the White House and Williams "distorted, misled, concealed and attempted to deceive the public" about their role in seeking his ouster. "I will not be silent," Goldstein said at a news conference, declaring "purely political considerations relating to the patronage demands of Senator Williams and the failure of this Administration to fulfill its commitment to the merit selection" as the reason he was being effectively terminated.

By tradition, the appointment of a U.S. Attorney goes to a U.S. Senator from the political party of the President. Republican Senator Clifford Case had sought the nominations of Lacey, Stern and Goldstein.

Williams, according to published reports, had submitted a list of seven potential candidates to the White House: Del Tufo, former New Jersey Bar Association President Joseph Nolan, former Assistant U.S. Attorneys George Koelzer and Oliver Lofton, attorney Roger Lowenstein; former Deputy Attorney General Howard Rosen; and former Assistant Essex County Prosecutor (now New Jersey Supreme Court Chief Justice) James Zazzali.

In early 1980, Williams was accused of accepting stock in a titanium mine as payment for his pledge to help an FBI agent posing as an Arab sheik obtain government contracts. Days later, the New York Times ran a story alleging that Del Tufo had recommended against the prosecution of Williams, who had been responsible for his appointment. Del Tufo denied making recommendations to the Justice Department that would aide Williams. He claimed that Williams had actually backed Nolan for the job he eventually received.

When Del Tufo resigned six months later, he claimed he needed to re-enter a private law practice to pay the college education of his four children. But the New York Times said that their Justice Department sources claimed that he may have been pushed out over his disagreement with Washington over the prosecution of several key cases. Grand juries in New York, Philadelphia and Washington returned indictments, while a New Jersey grand jury had not. Abscam-related probes of former Casino Control Commission Vice Chairman Kenneth McDonald and State Senator Joseph Maressa had not advanced (Williams's case was being prosecuted in New York), nor had a politically charged investigation of Newark Mayor Kenneth Gibson that included allegations that the Carter administration had intervened in the probe. Gibson backed Carter's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination at a time when Williams led a last-ditch effort to deny Carter the nomination by running an uncommited slate of delegates in the June primary that pledged to support California Governor Jerry Brown or former Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

In Essex County, Del Tufo had failed to win a conviction against former Newark Housing and Redevelopment Authority Executive Director Robert Notte, the 1978 GOP nominee for Essex County Executive. And Del Tufo's office was criticized when charges against former Essex County Sheriff John Cryan were dropped due to errors by the prosecution. Cryan lost his 1979 re-election bid largely as a result of his indictment.

Among the eight New Jersey donors to the U.S. Senate campaign of Jack Carter in Nevada are Robert DelTufo and Anne Martindell. DelTufo, who contributed $2,000, was appointed U.S. Attorney by Carter's father, President Jimmy Carter, in 1977; and Anne Clark Martindell, who was named U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand by Carter in 1977, gave $500. Carter won the Democratic nomination last night to challenge freshman GOP Senator John Ensign.

DelTufo, whose late brother, Raymond DelTufo, had been President Dwight Eisenhower's pick for U.S. Attorney in 1954, served as New Jersey's federal prosecutor until 1980. He sought the Democratic nomination for Governor in 1985 (losing to then-Essex County Executive Peter Shapiro) and served as Attorney General of New Jersey under Governor James Florio from 1990 to 1994.

Martindell's late brother was Blair Clark, was a foreign correspondent for CBS News, Associate Publisher of the New York Post, and Editor of The Nation magazine. In 1968, he managed Eugene McCarthy's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Anne Martindell was elected to the New Jersey State Senate in 1973, defeating GOP incumbent William Schluter.