Linda Stender

Anyone who watched NJN on election night witnessed it: Assemblywoman Linda Stender (D-Fanwood), who had been the favorite in the 7th District House race, choking back tears as she attempted to explain -- and no doubt understand -- why she lost to state Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Flemington).

It was a particularly bruising moment for Stender, who two years earlier had come within one point of ousting incumbent U.S. Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-Warren Twp).

"It was really a crushing defeat for me," Stender said today.

It was also a huge political comeback for Lance, who was seen by fellow Republicans during his time as Senate Minority Leader as not partisan or aggressive enough. Facing a potential challenge for that post last year by state Sen. Tom Kean, Jr. (R-Westfield), Lance withdrew to become the ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Six weeks after her loss, Stender is making the best of it, relishing her first holiday season in the last two election cycles during which she does not have to focus on raising money.

Today, Stender sought to dispel the notion that her campaign failed in large part because of internal divisions and pressure from outside groups to take on out-of-state staff and focus on less pertinent issues like birth control.

"That stuff is nonsense. It's concocting drama in the aftermath," said Stender, referring to contentions that EMILY's List officials had pressured her to put Washington, DC-based staffers in control of the campaign.

Assemblywoman Linda Stender says she has her party's support to seek another term

Assemblywoman Linda Stender (D-Fanwood) said today that she intends to run for re-election to the assembly in 2009.

“My immediate plan is to seek another term to the legislature, and I have great support from the state chair, my county chair, and I’ve got very good working relationships with my delegation members,” she said. “There’s a lot of important work to be done, we’re in a tough time in our economy and state and I’ll be looking forward to taking on those challenges.”

An Inside Edge report from just before the election said that a Union County Democratic official suggested that the party would try to get Stender to step aside if she lost the House race. But Stender said today that she has not felt any pressure to leave her seat.

Getty Images Photo

State Sen. Raymond Lesniak (right) joins Linda Stender and former President Bill Clinton at a campaign rally the Saturday before the 2008 general election.

State Sen. Raymond Lesniak, the de facto leader of the Union County Democratic organization, says he viewed Republican Leonard Lance as the best candidate for Congress in the hotly contested seventh district race and wanted him to win over Democrat Linda Stender, a four-term Assemblywoman from Union County who had Lesniak’s endorsement. 

Speaking on the Senate floor yesterday on a resolution honoring Lance on his departure from the State Senate, Lesniak said: “Senator Lance knows I said to him before the election ‘I really want you to win, Senator.’  I didn’t want to lose him in this body, but he by far was not only the best candidate, but he’s earned it and he deserves it.” Lesniak’s statement, which could be explained as post-election courteousness, underscores some substantial criticism by Democrats of Stender and her campaign – and could be another signal that the Union Democratic organization will back a different candidate for the State Assembly if Stender seeks re-election in 2009.

State Democratic Party Chair Joe Cryan, right, on the campaign trail with Elizabeth Councilman Nelson Gonzalez.

When State Democratic Chairman Joseph Cryan focused his players in the middle of the Obama presidential campaign, he told them to get ready for a long game, a two-year operation, in fact.

Despite all temptation to treat Obama’s victory like the ultimate end-zone rush and champagne romp, Election Night on Nov. 4th should be handled more the way a geared-up squad treats a 15-point lead in their favor in the locker room come half-time.

Everyone’s first job was to elect Sen. Barack Obama (D-Il.) president.  In comfortably accomplishing that, the campaign made up of 45 field organizers coordinated over a million volunteer calls, pounded on 750,000 door knocks, and built a volunteer base of more than 10,000 bodies.

U.S. Rep.-elect Leonard Lance will be tough to beat in 2010 after besting Democrat Linda Stender by nine percentage points

Democrats don't think it will be easy to  unseat soon-to-be freshman Leonard Lance from the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010.  Lance scored a 51%-42% victory over Linda Stender, who had been running for three years and had huge financial support from national Democrats.  The district has been Republican since Florence Dwyer ousted Harrison Williams in 1956. 

In an election year driven by a hemorrhaging economy and an electorate hungry for an end to divisive politics, 7th Congressional District candidate Linda Stender positioned herself on the wrong side of the Democratic wave.

The election marked a desire for change in both policy and politics. The Southern Strategy is dead. Barack Obama fought for votes in all corners of the country and won in places the pundits said he had no business even competing. Talk of the "Real America" and accusations of anti-Americanism looked petty in the context of our nation's challenges, particularly while most Americans worried about their jobs and lost retirement savings. The divisive issues that characterized the Bush era were but an asterisk in the presidential race, and when they did surface, the Karl Rove strategy of divide, distract and conquer failed to deliver. Despite Californians narrowly voting for the bigoted Proposition 8, they still delivered Obama a crushing margin over McCain. The grip of fear over the electorate has weakened.

Exhausted from years of excessive political divisiveness, voters of all stripes turned to Barack Obama because he embodied a spirit of respect, cooperation, and bipartisanship (not to be confused with centrism).

If there are parallels between the presidential and 7th Congressional District races, they buck the national trends that swept Obama and other Democrats into office. In this case, it was Leonard Lance -- a self-described Eisenhower Republican with a long record of reaching across the aisle, whose temperament offered voters a change of pace from the politics of the past.

Of the two New Jersey congressional districts where Republican incumbents did not seek re-election this year, the third district in parts of Ocean, Burlington and Camden counties is arguably more Republican than the seventh district, which includes parts of Hunterdon, Somerset, Union and Middlesex counties.  In District 3, Jim Saxton won 58% of the vote in 2006 and 63% in 2004; George W. Bush won with 51% in 2004.  In the 7th, Mike Ferguson nearly lost his 2006 re-election bid to Democrat Linda Stender, 49%-48%, after winning 57% in 2004; Bush won 53% four years ago.  Republicans have held the Saxton seat since 1884 and the Ferguson seat since 1956.

State Sen.Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) with supporters Robin Visconti, left, and Nicole Davidman

SOMERVILLE - Claiming victory here tonight in his 7th Congressional District contest, state Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) gave this crowd of Republicans reason to celebrate on an otherwse mostly difficult landscape.

"I think the editorial board support was important," said Lance, standing among his supporters in the Elks Club. "The papers unanimously endorsed me, and it mattered."

The final ad the Lance campaign ran in the cycle trailed those endorsements across the screen for emphasis.

The Stender campaign attempted to depict Lance as a Bush drone, and he ran much of the race without the necessary cash to punch back.