John Bennett

Is it just us, or do you cringe, or do you feel it just slightly annoying at the annual State of the State address when the Governor recognizes John Bennett as a former Governor?  While Donald DiFrancesco and Richard Codey had full years as Acting Governor – a subsequent state law removed the Acting from their titles, elevating them to former Governor status, Bennett’s term of office lasted exactly three and one-half days. 

Because the Senate was split 20-20 after the 2001 election, and since DiFrancesco’s term as a State Senator ended a week before James E. McGreevey was to take office, Codey and Bennett split the week.  Bennett moved into Drumthwacket, through a family party there, ordered ceremonial pens bearing his name, and even pardoned an old friend and contributor.

Of course, there is some irony to Bennett’s recognition by Jon Corzine yesterday: the Democrat who defeated him in a 2003 State Senate race, Ellen Karcher, was not there.  She lost re-election last November.  And Bennett, whose ethical woes seem to have disappeared, has made a political comeback, albeit a tiny one: now a lobbyist (what a surprise!), he got elected Republican State Committeeman from Monmouth County in 2005.

Thomas Kean, Jr., who officially becomes the Senate Minority Leader on Tuesday, is expected to name James Harkness as the Executive Director of the Senate Republican Office.  Harkness served as Chief Counsel to Governor Donald DiFrancesco and was a top staffer in the State Senate (when the GOP had a majority of seats) before joining Riker Danzig, a politically powerful law firm. 

The last time Leonard Lance ran for Congress was in 1996; he sought an open seat when Richard Zimmer ran for the United States Senate. In that GOP primary, Somerset County Freeholder Michael Pappas defeated Senate Majority Leader John Bennett by a 38%-34%, with Lance, then an Assemblyman, won 26%.

But Lance’s popularity among Republicans in Hunterdon County is undeniable, and Hunterdon is a key player in a seventh district Republican primary. And Union County, which has elected a Republican to Congress since Florence Dwyer ousted Harrison Williams in 1956, no longer dominates the district.

In 2006, 38% of Mike Ferguson’s primary votes came out of Hunterdon, while 29% came from Somerset, 27% from Union, and 6% from Middlesex.

Senate Minority Leader-designate Thomas Kean, Jr. is expected to fire John Samerjan as Executive Director of the Senate Republican office. Samerjan, who served as Press Secretary for Governor Thomas Kean's 1985 re-election campaign, was hired by John Bennett and has held the post during Leonard Lance's four years as Minority Leader.

There is considerable speculation that John Kingston, now the Assembly Republican Research Director, is the leading candidate to replace Samerjan.

It is more than a little ironic that the Asbury Park Press, the newspaper that effectively ended Republican control of the New Jersey State Senate in 2003 when they played a major role in the defeat of Co-Senate President John Bennett.  Since then, the Gannett-owned paper seems to have gone solidly Republican in the endorsement game.  So far this cycle, the APP has endorsed nine Republicans and one Democrat (Michele Rosen, who has virtually no chance of winning in a solidly GOP district).  In 2005, the APP endorsed twelve Republicans for twelve Assembly seats in Monmouth and Ocean counties – and Douglas Forrester for Governor.

The winner of the Christmas Tree Debate seems to be Republican Jennifer Beck, who criticized Democratic State Senator Ellen Karcher for taking a farmland tax credit on her 8-acre Marlboro home, where she grows Christmas trees.  Despite a serious campaign misstep – Beck’s opposition researcher thought Karcher only grew six trees when it was really six acres of trees – the Asbury Park Press effectively sided with Beck in an editorial that suggested that farmland tax credits should be used for real farmers, not well-off politicians and physicians who dabble as farmers as a way of reducing their property taxes. 

One difference between Leonard Lance and the other Senate Republican leaders over the last thirty years is that Lance has never run himself in a competitive general election. His predecessor, John Bennett, began his legislative career by ousting three-term Democratic Assemblyman Walter Kozloski in 1979. Donald DiFrancesco, the Senate President from 1992 to 2002, unseated Democratic Assemblywoman Betty Wilson in 1975, and won a State Senate seat against Joanne Rajoppi, now the Union County Clerk, in a politically competitive district that included Plainfield and Rahway. John Dorsey, who followed DiFrancesco as Senate Minority Leader in 1984, defeated incumbent Democrats Gordon MacInnes and Rosemarie Totaro to win an Assembly seat in 1975, and beat incumbent State Senator Stephen Wiley in 1977. And Thomas Gagliano, who was Minority Leader in the late 1970's, won a competitive race for an open Senate seat in 1977, defeating Marlboro Mayor Arthur Goldzweig in a district that elected one Republican and one Democrat to the Assembly that year.

This could be the year New Jersey gets to see if Stephen Borg, the 39-year-old Publisher of The Record, decides to show he is as tough and influential as Richard "Skip" Hidlay, the Executive Editor of the Asbury Park Press.  In 2003, Hidlay took on politicians viewed as ethically challenged and played a key role in the defeat of one of the state's most powerful elected officials, Co-Senate President John Bennett.  The Record has been hard on State Senator Joseph Coniglio, who is the target of a federal corruption investigation as he seeks re-electon to a third term in November -- though not to the level that the APP was on Bennett. 

Republicans have been unable to clear the field in the district where they have the best chance of picking up a State Senate seat. Manalapan Township Committeeman Joseph Locricchio has announced that he will seek the GOP nomination for Senate against Assemblywoman Jennifer Beck. The winner will face Democrat Ellen Karcher, who won a traditionally Republican district in 2003 by toppling Senate Co-President John Bennett.

Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce held a fundraiser for his own re-election campaign on Tuesday night. Worried that he could get lost in the already heated contest for an open Assembly seat in the 26th disrict, the 70-year-old Republican leader is not taking the June GOP primary for granted. In 2006, DeCroce sent out four separate direct mail pieces to Republican primary voters in his own district.

DeCroce's problem is that dollars spent on his own campaign in GOP-safe Morris County (where there is no organization line in primaries) comes out of the money he can export to other districts where Republicans are seeking to unseat Democratic incumbents. That makes it harder for DeCroce to recruit strong challenger candidates, and tougher for them to win without the Assembly Republican Leader's full warchest. Assembly Republican Victory 2007, DeCroce's leadership PAC, has $422,663cash-on-hand (Assembly Democrats have almost four times as much).

In 2003, Senate Co-President John Bennett and Republican Majority Leader Anthony Bucco spent a combined $1.2 million defending their seats in safe Republican districts after personal problems made each of them vulnerable. Bennett had to fend off a primary challenge before losing to Democrat Ellen Karcher; had he not run for re-election, his seat would have likely remained in GOP hands -- and some insiders argue strongly that the million dollars could have flipped 32 votes from Fred Madden to George Geist, giving the GOP twenty Senate seats and shared control of the upper house.