Joel Weingarten

Assemblyman Eric Munoz (R-Summit) passed away on Monday at the age of 61.

Eric Munoz first went to the Legislature in 2001 amidst a game of political musical chairs in the old 21st district, which was about equally divided between Essex and Union counties.  The six -term State Senator, Republican Louis Bassano, resigned to take a job at the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority.  The district had already been chopped up, with Bassano's home town, Union, being placed in the heavily-Democratic 20th district, where Raymond Lesniak was the Senator.

Assemblyman Kevin O'Toole won a special election for Bassano's State Senate seat, knowing that he would return to the Assembly eight months later.  His hometown, Cedar Grove, had already been redistricted into District 40, which was represented in the Senate by Henry "Tapioca" McNamara. 

Munoz defeated former Cranford Mayor Thomas Denny in a special election convention to fill O'Toole's Assembly seat.  At this point, four incumbent Assemblymen lived in the new 21st district: Richard Bagger, Thomas Kean, Jr. (who had won a special election convention earlier that year after Alan Augustine died in office), and Joel Weingarten, an Essex County Republican who had beaten Kean and Michael Ferguson to win the Union County GOP Convention in his 2000 campaign for Congress.  Bagger was unopposed for the GOP State Senate nomination; the incumbent, Senate President and Acting Governor Donald DiFrancesco, was not running for the Legislature.

If Assembly Minority Whip Jon Bramnick gets picked as the Republican candidate for Lt. Governor this June, he would have to drop his bid for re-election to the State Assembly.  That would create a special convention for his 21st district Assembly seat so that Republican County Committee members from the Union, Morris, Somerset and Essex towns in his district could pick a new legislative candidate.

Former Assemblyman Joel M. Weingarten of Millburn on Wednesday released a statement that he would not run for the 7th district Congressional seat being vacated at the end of next year by U.S. Rep. Mike Ferguson.

He said his concerns include homeland security, taxes and the loss of core American values, among them Constituional rights.

"While I have a clear vision for our nation that encompasses these matters," said Weingarten, a Republican, "I have decided not to pursue elective office in 2008."

Fearful that Sen. Leonard Lance's idea of a good fight consists of slapping another man in the face with a glove and then offering him the first choice of dueling pistols, gutfighter Republicans last week were desperately scanning the horizon for a blue-collar primary alternative.

Into the breach stepped 30-year old Kate Whitman, who on Friday announced her designs on the 7th district Congressional seat. Never having held elected office, the daughter of former Governor and millionaire Christie Todd Whitman can at least boast that this is not her first eyelash bat in the direction of elected office.

With mom proudly looking on last spring, the younger Whitman delivered a precocious prose poem homage to Ronald Reagan as part of her effort to woo a roomful of GOP delegates at the Somerset County Party convention. Whitman's object was a shot at county freeholder, and her 1980s flashback prod came at a time when Republicans found invocations of the Gipper particularly useful in the face of walking train wreck - and onetime presidential heir - George W. Bush.