Joseph Frelinghuysen

Barbara Buono will become the first woman to run on a Democratic ticket for statewide office since Thelma Parkinson sought a United States Senate seat in 1930, if Jon Corzine picks her to run for Lt. Governor.

The Senator from New Jersey was Walter Edge, who resigned in November 1929 to become the U.S. Ambassador to France.  The Governor, Morgan Larson, appointed David Baird, a Camden County businessman, to serve as a caretaker Senator. 

Edge's resignation triggered two separate races in November 1930: a special election to fill the remaining two months of Edge's term; and a contest for a full six-year Senate term.

Republicans nominated the same candidate for both campaigns: Englewood industrialist Dwight Morrow, who was serving as the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico. Morrow won 71% of the vote in a three-way primary with three-term U.S. Rep. Franklin Fort (21%) and former U.S. Senator Joseph Frelinghuysen (8%). President Herbert Hoover backed Morrow.

Democrats picked Alexander Simpson, a four-term State Senator from Hudson County and an ally of Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague, to run for the full term.  But instead of nominating Simpson to face off against Morrow in the special, Democrats chose to court the relatively new woman's vote by running Thelma Parkinson, a 32-year-old Democratic State Committeewoman from Vineland and a protégé of U.S. Rep. Mary Norton (D-Jersey City).

Morrow won both races, beating Parkinson and Simpson by 59%-39% margins.

Getty Images Photo

U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), convicted of criminal charges a few weeks ago, is trailing in his bid for re-election to the U.S. Senate seat he's held since 1968

If Republican Ted Stevens loses he'll become the fifth incumbent U.S. Senator to lose re-election in a year when a home state candidate is on the national ticket.  It happened twice in 1916, and again in 1964 and 1980.

Despite Gov. Sarah Palin's presence on the GOP ticket in Alaska, Stevens -- convicted on federal corruption charges last month -- trails Democrat Mark Begich by 814 votes, with 35,000 ballots still to be counted --

The first time that happened was in 1916, when Democrat Woodrow Wilson was re-elected to a second term as President.  But in Wilson's home state of New Jersey, Republican Joseph Frelinghuysen, a cousin of U.S. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, ousted Democratic U.S. Sen. James Martine by a 56%-39% margin. And in Indiana, the home state of Wilson's vice president, Thomas Marshall, Republican Harry New unseated incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. John Kern by a 48%-46% margin.

The race for Governor of New Jersey in 1919 centered around the national debate on prohibition, with Democrats running as the wet party and Republicans taking the dry position.  One week before the election, the Republican-controlled Congress passed the National Prohibition Act, overriding Woodrow Wilson's veto.  

The winner was Democrat Edward Edwards, a 56-year-old former banker who had been elected to represent Hudson County in the State Senate two years earlier.  He defeated Republican State Chairman Newton Bugbee by a 49%-46% margin.  Edwards called himself "as wet as the Atlantic Ocean," while Bugbee said he was personally wet but politically dry.  (He even drank a beer at a public event in Clifton to demonstrate his point.

Edward Edwardswas a product of Jersey City Mayor Frank Haugue's Hudson County political machine. He served two years as a State Senator before winning election as the Governor of New Jersey in 1919. It was in that primary that Hague emerged as a dominant player in statewide politics: aided by a huge plurality in Hudson County, Edwards won the Democratic primary by a 54%-46% margin over former State Senator Edward Nugent, the Essex County Democratic Chairman. The big issue that year was Prohibition, and Edwards (the anti-prohibition, "wet" candidate) won a narrow 52%-48% victory over a wealthy Trenton businessman, Newton Bugbee.In the 1920 presidential election, Warren Harding carried New Jersey in a landslide and helped Republicans sweep elections for the State Assembly. The GOP won 58 of the 60 Assembly seats.

In those days, New Jersey Governors could serve only one three-year term; the state Constitution had term limits that prohibited any Governor from seeking re-election. So Edwards decided to run for the U.S. Senate against an incumbent, Republican Senator Joseph Frelinghuysen.

Frelinghuysen, a Somerset County Republican and a cousin of future Congressman Rodney Frelinghuysen, had spent six years as a State Senator (and one as Senate President) and several years as President of the State Board of Education and as President of the State Board of Agriculture when he unseated freshman Democratic Senator James Martine by a 56%-39% margin in 1916. In the 1916 election, Wilson was re-elected to the Presidency, but lost his home state to Republican Charles Evans Hughes.

The 1922 campaign became a sort of referendum on the national Republican agenda. It was the mid-term election for the scandal-plagued Harding. Frelinghuysen supported Prohibition, Blue Laws, restrictions on immigration, and mandatory English lessons for foreign born citizens. Edwards campaigned on the slogan "Wine, Women and Song," supporting the repeal of the 18th amendment, the legalization of beer and wine, and a cultural liberalism that appealed to the state's ethnic voters.

Edwards beat Frelinghuysen, 55%-44%, and the Democrats picked up five seats in New Jersey's 12-member House delegation. His 11-point margin of victory helped Hague's gubernatorial candidate, Judge George Silzer (a former Middlesex County Democratic Chairman who had lost the Democratic nomination for Governor in 1910 to Woodrow Wilson), win by a narrow margin.

Five Republicans lined sough the GOP nomination to take on Edwards in 1928: former Senator Frelinghuysen, seeking a political comeback after six years in the insurance business; Republican National Committeeman Hamilton Fish Kean, a banker and the brother of former U.S. Senator John Kean (as well as the grandfather of future Governor Thomas Kean) who had unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Walter Edge in the 1924 U.S. Senate primary; former Governor Edward Stokes, a South Jerseyan who had served as Governor from 1905 to 1908; former two-term Congressman Edward Gray, a former Secretary to Governor Stokes who had finished third in the 1924 primary behind Edge and Kean; and Republican State Committee Vice Chairwoman Lillian Ford Feickert, the former President of the New Jersey Suffrage Association and the first woman to seek a major party nomination for U.S. Senate.

The primary was especially bitter. Stokes, seeking a political comeback after losing two races for the U.S. Senate and one for Governor, charged that Kean and Frelinghuysen were using their personal wealth to buy a U.S. Senate seat. He opposed the direct election of U.S. Senators, claiming that only the very wealthy could afford to mount expensive statewide campaigns.

The primary results were close: Kean was the winner with 34% of the vote, followed by Stokes (29%) and Frelinghuysen (28%). Feickert and Gray each received 5%. The turnout in the 1928 primary was 497,580 -- 58% more than the 215,242 votes cast in the 2002 Republican U.S. Senate primary.

In the general election, Prohibition was again a key issue, and Edwards told voters he was "as wet as the Atlantic Ocean." But in early October, Kean took an unlikely position, saying he too was "wet." While Kean lost the support of the Anti-Saloon League, but was able to take Prohibition off the table in the Senate race.

New Jersey followed the national political tide, with Republican Herbert Hoover carrying New Jersey by 309,000 votes over Democrat Alfred E. Smith. Kean defeated Edwards by over 233,000 votes, 58%-42%.

Edwards fell upon hard times after leaving the Senate in 1929. He went bankrupt following the state market crash, broke his political ties with Hague (who refused to support him for Governor in 1931), and was charged with fraud and corruption. In January, 1931, Edwards committed suicide.

Kean also became a one-term Senator. The new Democratic President, Franklin Roosevelt, was popular in New Jersey, and Kean had opposed the early part of the New Deal in the U.S. Senate. His opponent was the popular incumbent Governor, A. Harry Moore, a close ally of Hague. Moore defeated Kean by 231,000 votes, 58%-41%.