Seven days before his assassination, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spent the day in New Jersey, visiting churches, schools, and public housing in Newark, Paterson, Orange and Jersey City.   He also met with Newark business leaders at the offices of the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company, and met with civil rights leader LeRoi Jones (now known as Amiri Baraka).  King held a news conference at Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist Church, and spoke at South Side High School (now Malcolm X. Shabbaz High School).

He made news that day – March 28, 1968 – by saying that he might abandon his policy of not endorsing presidential candidates and take sides in the Democratic primary.  On March 12, U.S. Sen. Eugene McCarthy held President Lyndon Johnson to a 49%-42% win in the New Hampshire primary; U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy entered the race on March 16.  In Newark, King said he was “disenchanted” with Johnson, and that he would consider backing either McCarthy or Kennedy.  Johnson dropped out of the race three days later.

King also called for the defeat of Newark Mayor Hugh Addonizio: “The hour has come for Newark, New Jersey to have a black mayor,” King told more than 1,000 people at the Abyssinian Baptist Church. In 1970, Kenneth Gibson became the city’s first Black mayor when he defeated Addonizio in a runoff election.

Don't expect Republicans to compete in the race for Essex County Executive, as long as two-term incumbent Joseph DiVincenzo wins the Democratic primary. The GOP County Chairman, State Sen. Kevin O'Toole (R-Cedar Grove) enjoys an alliance with Newark political leader Stephen Adubato, Sr., who is DiVincenzo's mentor.  Republicans are unlikely to win Essex anyway, and prefer to put their financial resources into Bergen County, where Democratic County Executive Dennis C. McNerney is vulnerable.

But if DiVincenzo were to lose the Democratic nomination, O'Toole could become Adubato's safety net.  That's how the Republicans won the Exec post in 1990: when it became clear that organization Democrats were prepared to bail on incumbent Peter Shapiro, Republicans pulled their candidate, former Assemblyman Carl Orechio (R-Nutley), and replaced him with Democrat-turned-Republican Nicholas Amato, who had spent the last fifteen years as the Essex County Surrogate.  The GOP replaced Amato as their Surrogate candidate with Republican-turned-Democrat-turned-Republican Earl Harris, former Newark City Council President who had been acquitted on federal corruption charges three years earlier.  Amato and Harris both won, easily.

Harris started his career as a Republican, becoming one of the first African Americans to serve on the Essex County Board of Freeholders when he won in 1963.  He did not seek re-election in 1966, instead challenging U.S. Rep. Peter Rodino (D-Newark).  He lost 64%-33%.  Harris later switched to the Democratic Party and won a City Council seat in 1970, running on a ticket with mayoral candidate Kenneth Gibson.  In 1974, he became the first African American to serve as City Council President.  He lost a bid for mayor against Gibson in 1982; he and the incumbent were both under indictment at the time. In 1985, Harris was among a group of prominent Democrats to endorse Republican Gov. Thomas Kean for a second term against Shapiro.

If Assemblyman Anthony Chiappone (D-Bayonne) wins re-election despite his indictment on state corruption charges, he won't be the first politician accused of a crime to be validated by the voters.  In May 1982, State Sen. William Vincent Musto was re-elected Mayor of Union City 24 hours after being sentenced to seven years in a prison, and moths after his conviction on federal racketeering charges.  The same day, Newark Mayor Kenneth Gibson was forced into a runoff with City Council President Earl Harris; both were under indictment at the time.  The two candidates under indictment combined for 74% of the vote. (Gibson and Harris were both acquitted, although Gibson was later charged on another offense.)

Five weeks before a 1990 special election, Assemblyman Cyril Yannarelli (D-Paterson) was indicted on charges that he paid campaign workers to falsify some 5,000 voter registration forms.  He lost the heavily Democratic 35th district to Republican Frank Catania by nearly 3,000 votes.  Yannarelli, a former Passaic County Freeholder who had sought the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination in 1982, had won a special election convention for the Assembly after John Girgenti (D-Hawthorne) replaced the late Frank Graves in the State Senate.  Yannarelli avoided prison by participating in a pre-trial intervention program.

In 1980, U.S. Rep. Frank Thompson (D-Trenton), accused of taking bribes from an undercover FBI agent posing as an Arab sheik, lost his bid for a fourteenth term to 27-year-old Republican Christopher Smith by a 57%-41% margin.  Thompson outspent Smith by a 2-1 margin in a district where Jimmy Carter outpolled Ronald Reagan.

If Gov. Jon Corzine picks TV reality star Randal Pinkett as the Democratic candidate for Lt. Governor, Pinkett will become the first African American to run statewide as a major party candidate in New Jersey.  Newark Mayor Kenneth Gibson sought the Democratic nomination for Governor in 1981 and 1985 without success.

The first Latino to run statewide was Robert Menendez, who was elected to the United States Senate in 2006.  Corzine would get credit for advancing the candidacies of two minority candidates; he appointed Menendez to his Senate seat after his election as Governor in 2005.

But the selection of Dr. Pinkett would mean the rejection of two women reportedly on the short list for LG: State Senators Barbara Buono (D-Metuchen) and Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck).  New Jersey Democrats have not nominated a woman for statewide office since they picked 32-year-old Thelma Parkinson to run for a two-month unexpired term in the U.S. Senate in 1930.  She lost to Republican Dwight Morrow (Charles Lindbergh's father-in-law) by a 59%-39% margin.

If Sharpe James is indicted today, he would become the fifth Mayor of Newark out of the last seven to face criminal charges.  Kenneth Gibson, a four-term Mayor who lost to James in 1986, pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion in 2002 as part of a plea agreement on fraud and bribery charges.  He had been indicted in 1980 on charges of giving out no-show jobs, but was acquitted by an Essex County jury.

Gibson's predecessor, Hugh Addonizio, had spent fourteen years in Congress before running for Mayor in 1962.  According to local legend, when asked why he would give up his seniority in Washington to be Mayor, Addonizio said: "Because you can make a million dollars in that job."   Despite his indictment on charges that he received over $1.4 million in kickbacks from city contractors, Addonizio ran for a third term and made it to a runoff with Gibson.  His trial began eight days before the runoff, and after an eight-week trial, he was found guilty on 64 counts of extortion and conspiracy.  He spent five years in a federal prison.

The Mayor-elect of Ocean City comes with a political pedigree: 59-year-old Salvatore Perillo began his career in 1970 as a lawyer working for Newark's newly-elected Mayor, Kenneth Gibson. Gibson, the City Engineer, became the city's first African American Mayor when he ousted incumbent Hugh Addonizio in that year. Perillo worked his way up from Law Clerk to Assistant Corporation Counsel, to Newark Corporation Counsel. After Republican Richard Squires was elected Atlantic County Executive in 1979, Perillo relocated to serve as County Counsel. He is now a partner at Perskie, Nehmad & Perillo, a prominent South Jersey law firm; one of his law partners is Keith Davis, the Atantic County Republican Chairman. Perillo won without the backing of either of the Cape May County political organizations: the GOP leadership largely supported Councilman Frank McCall, while Democrats supported Councilman Jody Alessandrine.

After Sharpe James became Mayor of Newark in 1986 (he defeated four-term incumbent Kenneth Gibson), he was able to influence the way Essex County Democratic leaders picked state legislators. His first opportunity came a month after taking office when State Senator John Caufield, a white Democrat who had been Newark Fire Director under Gibson, died. James picked Ronald Rice, a West Ward Councilman who had been among a small group of elected officials to publicly back him against Gibson, to fill the Senate seat. The following year, James claimed one of the 29th district Assembly seats -- dumping five-term incumbent Eugene Thompson so that his Chief of Staff (and cousin), Jackie Mattison, could go the Legislature.

One of James' first moves after defeating Gibson in May 1986 was to endorse his friend, South Ward Councilman Donald Payne , for Congress in a Democratic primary challenge against 19-term incumbent Peter Rodino, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Payne lost that primary, but in 1988, when Rodino (who was helped by Gibson's support in a district where white's were the minority) retired, James made it clear that the seat would go to Payne.

Over the last twenty years, contests for Essex County Executive were among the most exciting in the state. In 1986, Democrat-turned-Republican Nicholas Amato ousted incumbent Peter Shapiro, who had been the Democratic candidate for Governor the year before. For years later, Amato switched back to the Democratic side, but the nomination went to Sheriff Thomas D'Alessio, who narrowly beat the Deputy Mayor of Millburn just as Governor Jim Florio began to increase taxes. By 1994, D'Alessio was in prison and Republican James Treffinger defeated East Orange Mayor Cardell Cooper, who had won the Democratic primary by a single-digit margin over Thomas Giblin. Treffinger won re-election narrowly (52%) in 1998 against former Newark Mayor Kenneth Gibson -- that was between the indictment Gibson beat and the one he did not. In 2002 it was Treffinger who was in trouble -- he was the front runner for the GOP U.S. Senate nomination (against Bob Torricelli) when FBI agents raided his Newark office, ending his political career. Democrats had a hotly contested primary between Giblin, the former Democratic State Chairman, and Joseph DiVincenzo, then the Freeholder President. The general election featured DiVincenzo and anti-county government, anti-Newark Arena Candace Straight, a GOP fundraiser former Sports Authority Commissioner who spent over $500,000 of her own money. But as DiVincenzo prepares to seek re-election to a second term in 2006, he looks extraordinarily solid: he has no major problems among the traditionally divisive Essex Democrats, and Republicans have few prospects to run a competitive race. And after DiVincenzo's Chief of Staff, Phil Alagia, delivered an 85,500 vote plurality as head of Jon Corzine's Essex County campaign, possible opponents are running away.