Jon Bramnick

Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean, Jr., (R-Union), left; and state Sen. Kevin O'Toole, GOP chairman of Essex County and chair of the GOP chairs.

PRINCETON – It didn’t look like a scene of devastation – or of a coming battle.

In the swank lobby of the Hyatt Regency, water tumbled over rocks and splashed into a pool, where Koi fish gaped up at a swiftly striding figure heading toward a crew of young, BlackBerry-thumbing operatives at the far end of a long, carpeted corridor.

On his way to the Republican Party chairmen’s dinner, Chris Christie took several questions before an aide steered him toward his destination: a room in which 15 of the party’s 21 chair people and party leaders waited to assess the merits of the former U.S. Attorney and three other Republican candidates for governor a month in front of the first county convention in Union.

Like a lot of his colleagues, Ocean County Republican Chairman George Gilmore personally thinks Christie gives his party the best shot at rebirth.

“I will be endorsing Chris Christie,” he said, against the nagging back story of former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan, who for months has aggressively organized a grassroots effort in the likely event he’s unable to scale the walls of the establishment at a majority of the party’s nominating conventions.

Former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie (with Scotch Plains Mayor Nancy Malool) at a GOP mixer earlier this month.

In what GOP sources say is the first major gubernatorial fundraiser for former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, Assembly Whip Jon Bramnick (R-Westfield) will host a $3,400-a-head dinner at his Westfield home for the Republican frontrunner for governor this Saturday.

Sources say both Christie and his political confidante, Bill Palatucci, will be in attendance at an event sources say has already pulled in $50,000 for Christie.

GOP candidate for governor Chris Christie arrives at the party at the Marco Polo on Thursday evening.

SUMMIT –To the oft-muttered intra-party charge that Republicans plan to coronate former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie as their candidate for governor, Union County Republican Chairman Phil Morin said his organization stands on its record. 

Last year, millionaire businesswoman Anne Evans Estabrook was supposedly the money candidate for U.S. Senate. Then the county committee here awarded the line to erstwhile underdog state Sen. Joseph Pennacchio (R-Morris), dropping the jaws of not only Estabrook’s campaign infrastructure but the party establishment in all 21 counties.  

After Estabrook pulled the plug on her candidacy owing to health problems, Morin resisted pressure to hold another convention to dump Pennacchio and swap in the state GOP’s latest frontrunner, former U.S. Rep. Dick Zimmer, who would ultimately go on to secure the statewide nomination. 

Morin’s view was Jersey Joe earned it the hard way, he should have it.

Another member of the Star-Ledger buyout group has moved over to the partisan side: Diane Walsh, a veteran reporter who covered Middlesex County, is the new press secretary to Assembly Minority Whip Jon Bramnick.  Walsh, who started as a Hudson Dispatch reporter, was part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for their coverage of Gov. James E. McGreevey.

Plainfield Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs

PLAINFIELD – Get it right in four years or you’re gone. 

That’s the message the voters consistently deliver in the Union County city of Plainfield, and looking at past results, most of their elected leaders get it wrong. 

In 125 years of political wrangling, only one mayor won reelection here. 

That was the late Al McWilliams, a self-professed New Democrat who in 2005 failed to get over a rising crime wave and lost his bid for a third term to machine Democrat Sharon Robinson-Briggs by 325 votes, 2,713 to 2,388.

Now Robinson-Briggs, 49, Plainfield’s first woman to serve as mayor, readies for her reelection campaign next year in what will likely be a hard fought Plainfield contest with once and future councilman Adrian Mapp, a McWilliams ally and now leader of the New Democrats, who’s energized by his successful return to local politics.

Michael Chertoff with President George W. Bush in a 2005 White House photograph.

UNION – Talk to people in New Jersey’s legal profession and no one denies that what Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff perhaps lacks in charisma or courtroom presence, he compensates for with something more fundamental:  profound powers of reason. 

“Going back 20 years, he was a great lawyer, a brilliant lawyer – hard but fair,” said attorney Ted Wells.

His friends in the New Jersey political world say Chertoff’s a creature of hard analysis not politics.  “This is one of the brilliant legal minds of the country,” said Assemblyman Jon Bramnick (R-Westfield), who introduced Chertoff today at Kean University, where the Homeland Security Secretary and author of the USA Patriot Act reflected on his three-year term in the Bush administration.

His tenure included his grim mea culpa in front of Congress following what he acknowledged was his department’s 2005 failure to respond effectively to Hurricane Katrina. 

But Katrina didn’t come up today as a cross-section of audience members in friendly fashion mostly picked the Elizabeth native’s brain about general public policy during the question and answer portion of his presentation.

UNION – As former U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie publicly mulls a run for governor, Assemblyman David Rible (R-Wall) says he believes the Republican Party should rally around one candidate for governor before the June primary.

“We have to get unified,” said Rible, who didn’t discount the value of a GOP Primary fight, but also doesn’t want to see a bloodletting that could leave his party sapped by the time a candidate squares of with the muscle-bound war chest of incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine.

Of Christie, the former Wall Township police officer turned legislator, said, “He has a tremendous resume and good name ID. He’s not a far right conservative, and that’s good. I’m not sure New Jersey is looking for someone from the party’s far right.”

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff will reflect on his time in office and discuss the nation’s preparedness at a special 9 a.m. appearance on Thursday, Dec. 4, at Kean University in Union. 

A former U.S. Attorney in New Jersey and Elizabeth native, Chertoff has served as the country’s chief security officer since 2005.

Assemblyman Jon Bramnick (R-Westfield), a friend of Chertoff’s, arranged the speaking event with the college.

Assembly Minority Whip Jon Bramnick (R-Westfield), left, campaigns last year in Atlantic County with Assemblyman John Amodeo (R-Margate) and Assemblyman Vince Polistina (R-Egg Harbor).

Raging moderate state Sen. Leonard Lance’s (R-Hunterdon) victory should serve as a lesson to every downtrodden member of the GOP as the party tries to shake off tough losses from the Nov. 4th election, argues Assembly Minority Whip Jon Bramnick (R-Westfield). 

The pro-choice Republican believes his party gets into trouble when it tries to use the chambers of government to lecture taxpayers about how to behave in their personal lives. 

“The minute you preach morality, you’re done,” Bramnick said. “That sold after Monica Lewinsky, but frankly, I’m offended by it.” 

Bramnick, who’s flirted with going statewide in recent years and emerged as an early favorite to pursue the 7th District Congressional seat Lance just won before standing down, said regardless of the national party's strategies, Republicans in New Jersey shouldn’t run on family values.  

Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) in Summit on Friday.: Politicker photoSUMMIT - Coming off a train station rally here for presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), former U.S. Rep. Dick Zimmer and state Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) convened a town hall meeting at the high school, where they brandished their fiscally conservative credentials in a room of about 50 voters.

Now in a race with Assemblywoman Linda Stender (D-Fanwood) to represent the 7th Congressional District, Lance the veteran legislator underscored his tenacity fighting bloated government, including the administration of disgraced former Gov. Jim McGreevey.Former U.S. Rep. Dick Zimmer addresses voters in the Summit High School Library as GOP organizer Kelly Hatfield looks on: Politicker photo

"I am the ‘Lance’ of Lance versus McGreevey," the senator said of his suit against the former administration to curb borrowing to balance the state budget.

The New Jersey Supreme Court in 2004 allowed McGreevey to borrow $1.9 billion, or nearly 7 percent of what was then a $28 billion budget, but forbade the governor from borrowing in the future.

Talking to Summit voters Friday evening in the high school library, Lance took pride too in noting how his proposed Constitutional amendment to ban borrowing without voter approval will appear on the Nov. 4th ballot.