Leo Carlin

Essex County Democratic Chairman Dennis Carey (left) and State Sen. Donal Fox (D-South Orange) in the early 1960's.

Leonard Lance offered a lesson in New Jersey political history during his farewell address to the State Senate on Monday - but unfortunately got one of his facts wrong. Lance spoke of his first memory of the Senate, going to Trenton in 1956, at age three and a half, when his father was the Senator from Hunterdon County and watching some Senators like Wayne Dumont (the Senate President), Frank "Hap" Farley and Mark Anton. While Lance's knowledge is always impressive, he got one thing wrong: Anton wasn't in the Senate in 1956; he lost re-election two months earlier.

Anton, the Chairman of the Suburban Propane Gas Corporation, was a half-term Republican from Essex County who was elected in a 1953 special election after Alfred Clapp, who had mounted an unsuccessful campaign for the GOP gubernatorial election, resigned to become a Superior Court Judge. When Anton sought a full term in 1955, he found himself in a feud with former U.S. Attorney William Tompkins, a former Assemblyman from Essex County who was at the time serving as the Assistant U.S. Attorney General. Anton and Tompkins were both interested in seeking the Republican nomination for Governor in 1957.

Tompkins, who considered challenging Anton himself (he ran for the Senate ten years later but lost to a Democratic slate headed by John Giblin), instead recruited Assembly Majority Leader William Barnes to run. Barnes attacked Anton for his support of night harness racing and his membership on a citizens committee formed to end a high profile strike on the New York pier, but lost the primary to Anton, 53%-47%.

Unable to unite the Essex GOP in the general election, Anton lost to Democrat Donal Fox. Fox, a former Assistant Essex County Prosecutor who had managed the nearly successful U.S. Senate campaign of Charles Howell in 1954 (Howell, a Democratic Congressman from Mercer County, lost the open Senate seat to Republican Clifford Case by an excruciatingly close 48.7%-48.5% margin), became the first Democrat to win the Essex Senate seat since 1908. He took office on the day Lance described as his first memory of visiting the Senate chamber.

Fomer New Jersey and Essex County Democratic Party Chairman Ray Durkin, and his son, Essex County Clerk Chris Durkin

At Mayfair Farms Restaurant in West Orange on Saturday, the St. Patrick’s Guard of Honor of New Jersey hailed Ray Durkin, or the chairman, as they call him here in a nod of respect to his many years of service to the Democratic Party. 

Full-blooded and hybrid and old and new country Irish fathers and their sons - Giblin, Byrne, Stack, Barrett, McCarthy, Baroni, Mac Donald, O’Toole and Codey – for one afternoon absorbed any and all of New Jersey’s other ethnic groups into the arms of Durkin’s Irish-America.  

Durkin, who led the Essex County Democratic Organization from 1980 to 1992 in addition to serving as chair of the state party from 1985 to 1989, was the 68th St. Patrick’s Guard of Honor on a list going back to 1940 that includes President John F. Kennedy, Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., and governors Richard J. Hughes, Brendan Byrne and Richard Codey.  

In accepting the award, the former Newark City Firefighter and head of the West Ward Young Democrats who has been lowkey politically over the course of the past 12 years, said he was most proud of his wife and five sons, including Essex County Clerk Chris Durkin, who introduced his father on Saturday.

It's tough to stump Steve Adubato, Sr. on political trivia, especially when the question is about Newark politics.  And The Inside Edge should have know better than to ask him to name the last Mayor of Newark to run statewide.  Adubato had no trouble coming up with the name of Vincent Murphy, who was the Democratic candidate for Governor in 1943; Murphy lost to Republican Walter Edge by nearly 147,000 votes.  (Murphy lost his bid for re-election to a third term as Mayor in 1949, and served as President of the New Jersey AFL-CIO from 1961 to 1970.)  

Adubato told PolitickerNJ.com's Max Pizarro that "no Mayor of Newark ever succeeded statewide. They either went to jail or oblivion."  He's right.

Look at Theodore Frelinghuysen, a member of one of New Jersey's premier political families.  Frelinghuysen was elected to the U.S. Senate (on his second try) in 1828, at age 41, but lost his bid for re-election six years later.  In 1837, he won a two-year term as Mayor of Newark -- the last election he would ever win. Frelinghuysen, the great-great-great-uncle of U.S. Rep. Rodney Frelyinghuysen, was the Whig candidate for Vice President on Henry Clay's ticket in 1844 and lost to Democrats James Polk and George Dallas -- although the did carry New Jersey, with 50.5% of the vote.

The last seven Mayors of Newark -- going back more than seventy years -- were defeated in their bids for re-election. The incumbent, Sharpe James, ousted four-term incumbent Kenneth Gibson in 1986. Gibson had unseated Mayor Hugh Addonizio in 1970. Addonizio defeated Mayor Leo Carlin 1958; Carlin won in 1953 over Mayor Ralph Villani, who had won office four years earlier after upsetting Mayor Vincent Murphy. In 1941, Murphy was elected Mayor in a close race with incumbent Meyer Ellenstein, who had defeated Mayor Jerome Congleton eight years before. Congleton had become Mayor in 1928 when the incumbent, Thomas Raymond, passed away.