John Bennett

GOP Assemblywoman Jennifer Beck has decided to run for State Senate against Democratic incumbent Ellen Karcher, setting up one of the premier legislative contests of the 2007 mid-term elections. Beck will give up the Assembly seat she won in 2005 to challenge Karcher, who upset Co-Senate President John Bennett in 2003.

Update: Beck says that the announcement of her Senate candidacy is premature. ""I have not yet made a decision or any type of announcement regarding which seat I will be running for in 2007," she told PoliticsNJ.com. But Senate Republicans say she is running against Karcher.

On the other side of the Hudson River, where Republicans have a 34-28 majority in the State Senate, Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer has appointed a GOP State Senator to head New York's Homeland Security office. Spitzer will call a special election within 30-40 days of taking office to fill Michael Balboni's seat in a Nassau County district where Democrats have an edge in voter registration. The Senate Majority Leader, Joseph Bruno, acknowledged in December that his private consulting business is the target of a federal probe.

New Jersey Democrats picked up a Senate seat in 2003 by moving a popular Republican State Senator from a Democrat-leaning district to state job. John Matheussen, a four-term incumbent who finished third in the 2002 GOP U.S. Senate primary, resigned from the Senate in 2003 to become the Executive Director of the Delaware River Port Authority with a $175,000 annual salary. With Matheussen out of the way, South Jersey Democrats were able to spend $4 million (the most expensive legislative race in state history) to swing a 63-vote win for Democrat Frederick Madden over George Geist, who had been appointed to fill the unexpired Senate seat.

Geist's loss in the fouth disrict and the defeat of Co-Senate President John Bennett in a race that became a referendum on Bennett's business ethics, gave Democrats majority control of the New Jersey Senate for the first time in a dozen years.

Almost four years later, there is speculation among Democrats that Matheussen is not completely secure in his position. The DRPA has been in trouble for more than a year over a feud between New Jersey and Pennsylvania over a proposal to spend $300 million to deepen the channel on the Delaware River between Camden and Cape May by five feet. Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell, who also serves as DRPA Chairman, has canceled every monthly meeting since November 2005 in an effort to get New Jersey's eight Commissioners to support the channel widening plan.

By tradition, Pennsylvania gets the DRPA Chairmanship and New Jersey gets the Executive Director. (In North Jersey, it is the opposite: a New Jerseyan serves as Chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, while a New Yorker is the Executive Director.) Republican State Senator Nicholas Asselta has denied reports that he is under consideration for Matheussen's job.

For extreme political junkies: Rendell and New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine could wind up on short lists for the Democratic Vice Presidential nomination, leading some insiders to wonder how the bi-state feud might play out in a contest for electoral college votes.

Several Monmouth County Republicans say that Freeholder Lillian Burry is actively considering a bid for State Senator in the 12th district next year, if Assemblywoman Jennifer Beck decides not to run. Republicans view incumbent Ellen Karcher, who defeated Co-Senate President John Bennett in 2003, as the most vulnerable of the Senate's 22 Democrats.

Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce is taking his own 2007 re-election campaign seriously. Worried that he could get lost in the already heated contest for an open Assembly seat in the 26th disrict (incumbent Joseph Pennacchio is running for the Senate) between attorney Jay Webber and Kinnelon Council President Lawrence Casha, this week DeCroce sent out his fourth direct mail piece of 2006 to Republican primary voters.

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 $239,311 cash-on-hand (Assembly Democrats have almost three times as much) and has just $109,920 in his own account accont.

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.

One strategist suggested that the 70-year-old DeCroce could put his party first and not run for an eleventh term and instead devote all his energies to helping Republicans battle Democrats in districts where his party might pick up seats -- but even that strategist says that few politicians are that selfless. DeCroce could try to put an end to the primary in his own district by convincing one of the candidates to wait for the next opportunity.

The anticipated guilty plea of John Lynch will end a reign of power that has extended through eight Governors, not including John Bennett. Lynch has spent most of his life in politics: his father, John A. Lynch, was the longtime Mayor of New Brunswick and served as Middlesex County's State Senator from 1955 until his retirement in 1977. (He was the Senate President in 1966, when the Democrats took control for the first time since 1914.) He was elected New Brunswick Democratic Municipal Chairman in 1975, Mayor in 1978, and State Senator in 1981. He was the Majority Leader from 1986 to 1990, the Senate President from 1990 to 1992, and the Minority Leader from 1992 to 1998. He has been the undisputed political boss of Middlesex County -- one of the state's premier Democratic political machines. Since leaving the Senate in 2001 -- reportedly to reap the benefits of his efforts to elect James E. McGreevey as Governor -- Lynch has run one of the largest Democratic political action committees in the state.

Former Co-Senate President John Bennett is mulling a bid for Monmouth County Republican Chairman.

Frederick Niemann was a giant killer in 2004. He had defeated the 17-year incumbent, William Dowd, for Monmouth County Republican Chairman, and seemed destined to a career of relative power as the boss of a large and powerful county GOP organization. But two years later, the Monmouth GOP is in disarray and Niemann may face a tough race if he wants to get re-elected to a second term. To Niemann's credit, he took over under difficult circumstances -- his party had just been through an unsuccessful bid to get Co-Senate President John Bennett re-elected, and Bennett's ethical issues had hurt the entire party. The following year, an early-morning sweep left eleven Monmouth County political leaders of both parties under arrest. But Niemann had had some problems, and today his party organization seems deeply divided. He has gotten into hot water over publicly indentifying loopholes in campaign fundraising laws, and for comments made about terrorism. His candidate in a Special Election Convention for Monmouth County Freeholder lost. And last Saturday, a convention to pick a new Freeholder candidate was a disaster. Niemann played footsy with one candidate, who failed to secure a first ballot win. The second ballot was full of contoversy: the Monmouth GOP Executive Director said that voting machines "were recalibrated after the voting was started." The vote ended with a one-vote margin for Manalapan Committeeman Andrew Lucas, but the party official later said it was a tie. Yesterday, Howell Mayor Joseph DiBella dropped out of the race.

Marie Muhler's announcement that she would not seek re-election to a fourth term as Monmouth County Surrogate marks the end of a political career than spanned four decades. A mother of five, Muhler began by running for the Marlboro Board of Education, and then moved up to the Freehold Regional Board of Education.

When she first ran for the State Assembly in 1975, the 37-year-old Muhler was facing two Democratic incumbents who had won upset victories in the '73 Watergate landslide. The was was an exceptionally close one: Assemblyman Walter Kozloski was the top vote-getter, with Muhler finishing 142 votes behind him -- and just 271 votes behind the other incumbent, Morton Salkind. Muhler's running mate, Jerome Burke, who had served as an Assemblyman from Essex Couny in 1964 and 1964, finished only 13 votes behind Salkind.

When veteran Republican State Senator Alfred Beadleston retired in 1977, Monmouth GOP leader decided to run Surrogate Thomas Gagliano for the Senate seat instead of Muhler, who was easily re-elected to a second term in the Assembly, by a margin of more than 3,300 votes. (Muhler finished first in that race, and Kozloski won a third term by just 213 votes over former Assemblyman John Dawes, whose law firm employed a young attorney named John Bennett. In 1979, with Kozlowski dying at the age of 44, Bennett won that seat.)

She won a contested race for the Assembly Republican leadership in 1976, becoming Assistant Minority Whip -- back in the days when there were only four leadership posts. When the Minority Leader, Thomas Kean, left the Legislature to run for Governor in 1977, a series of move-ups put Muhler in the Minority Whip post, and she became the #2 Republican in the Assembly leadership in 1982 when she became Assistant Minority Leader. But after the 1983 mid-term elections, a shake-up in the GOP caucus led to her defeat in a bid to keep her leadership post.

In 1980, Muhler nearly won election to the U.S. House of Representatives, coming within 1,900 votes of ousting eight-term Democrat James Howard. Muhler ran against Howard again in 1982, but lost by a much wider margin. She resigned from her Assembly seat in 1986 when she took a job with the state Department of Community Affairs. She returned to electoral politics in 1991 when Monmouth Republicans picked her to run against an incumbent Democratic Surrogate Patricia Bennett (who had won five years earlier against the GOP candidate, Frederick Niemann.) She was easily elected to three terms.

John Bennett first went to Trenton in 1979, when he won a State Assembly seat against Walter Kozkowski, a young three-term Democrat with serious health issues (he died three weeks after Bennett defeated him.) Over the next 24 years, Bennett won four more terms in the Assembly and then five terms in the State Senate with relative ease. If not for ethical questions raised after the Asbury Park Press discovered that he had overbilled the Township of Marlboro $4,000 in legal fees, Bennett would have been secure in his bid for re-election in 2003. Some observers believe that had Bennett not been forced to spend $1 million defending his own seat, the money would have helped George Geist overcome a 63 vote deficit against Democrat Frederick Madden in the fourth district -- keeping the Senate split at 20-20 for the next four years. When James E. McGreevey announced that his resignation the following summer, Bennett and Richard Codey would both have been in line to become Acting Governor.

What are New Jerseyans thankful for?

Richard Codey is thankful for Golan Cipel, who enabled him to spend fourteen months as the Governor of New Jersey.

Jon Corzine is thankful for Doug Forrester's pollster, Arthur Finkelstein.

Steve DeMicco is thankful for Marcus Goldman and Samuel Sachs. (So are many, many other New Jersey Democrats.)

Doug Forrester is thankful he wasn't worth more money. He's thankful -- "grateful," actually -- for having once again had the opportunity and privilege of serving as his party's standard-bearer.

Tom Kean Jr. is thankful for DNA -- or maybe not, depending upon the accuracy of the Quinnipiac poll. He's also thankful the Codey family doesn't like Washington.

Steve Corodemus and Sean Kean are thankful that gays in Asbury Park don't vote.

New York and Philadelphia television stations are thankful for Jon Corzine, Doug Forrester and the public financing of gubernatorial primary candidates.

Regena Thomas is thankful no one really cares whether the Secretary of State is a full-time job.

Joe Fiordaliso is thankful he's headed off to the BPU before Jon Corzine arrives in Trenton.

Senate Republicans are thankful meteorologists are not predicting a harsh winter.

Tom Wilson is thankful the Republican State Committee raised almost $1 million this year. The Democrats are thankful for that too.

The Assembly Democratic Caucus is thankful for the support of the 37th district Democratic County Committee; the Senate Democratic Caucus is thankful Joe Ferriero at least tried.

Chris Christie is thankful for all the people who make his job possible. So is Wayne Bryant.

Nelson Albano is thankful for the incompetence of Drew McCrosson.

Jen Beck is thankful John Bennett wasn't heading her ticket and Mike Panter is thankful people haven't forgotten about Bennett.

Democrats, Doug Forrester says, are thankful for George W. Bush.

Bob Schroeder is thankful all you need to run for Governor is 1,000 signatures, and, for some still undisclosed reason, George Gilmore.

Jon Corzine is thankful someone like Tom Byrne didn't run as an Independent. And he's thankful Steve Kornacki's report that Bill Bradley was challenging him in the Democratic primary was just an April Fool's Day joke.

Amy Handlin is especially thankful that Sam Thompson isn't going to try to bang her. And Joe Azzolina is thankful Thompson isn't going to bang him either.

And PoliticsNJ.com -- well, we're still thankful for Bob Torricelli -- and Torricelli, facing the prospect of New Jersey's Senate seats being occupied by Frank Lautenberg and Bob Menendez, is probably thankful we've become such a forgiving people.