Linda Stender

Linda Stender trails Leonard Lance by four percentage points in her campaign's most recent internal poll, according to sources in the Stender campaign -- and confirmed by Democratic officials familiar with the 7th district campaign. Former President Bill Clinton is being dispatched to Cranford on Saturday to help boost Stender's chances to win the open House seat -- which Republicans have held continuously since 1956. 

If Linda Stender loses her race for Congress next week, New Jersey Democrats are prepared to blame Emily's List and other Washington-based organizations for her defeat, according to sources within the Stender campaign.  The seventh district House seat has been viewed as a likely pickup for Democrats, but internal polling from both campaigns is showing that Republican Leonard Lance can win the seat that Stender nearly took away from retiring U.S. Rep. Mike Ferguson two years ago.  Suddenly worried about blowing an opportunity to take a seat the GOP has held since 1956, Democrats are bringing in big guns, like former President Bill Clinton, to help Stender win.

Normal 0

Leonard Lance Toes Right-wing Republican Party Line in Opposing Vitale Bill to Stop Gouging of Senior Citizens

ISELIN -- If only third graders could vote.

Talking to PolitickerNJ.com before addressing a group of senior citizens with State Sen. Joseph Vitale (D-Woodbridge), Stender said that ads run waged by her opponent and the third party groups that support him -- rhyming her last name with "Spender," "truth bender" or putting anti-Stender lyrics to the tune of Yankee Doodle -- are insulting to the voters of the 7th Congressional District.

"I'm very popular amongst the third grade set because of the nursery rhyme nature of the campaign that's been run. The kids are always happy to see me, because they know the ads," she said.

Stender's ads against State Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Flemington) have been primarily negative, drawing parallels Lance to President Bush. She prefers the word "comparative."

The conventional wisdom in New Jersey -- and in Washington, where congressional races are carefully tracked -- is that New Jersey's seventh district was a likely pickup for the Democrats. But news that national Democrats are dispatching former President Bill Clinton to campaign for Linda Stender on Saturday might be interpreted as a sign that the four-term Assemblywoman has not yet closed the deal on the seat, and lends credibility to GOP claims that Republican State Sen. Leonard Lance's campaign has internal polling numbers that show him ahead by nine percentage points.  Democrats would not be sending Clinton, one of their most effective campaigners, to Central New Jersey on the weekend before the election if they weren't worried about the race.

Bill Clinton came to New Jersey the weekend before the 2006 election to stump for Bob Menendez and Linda Stender

Former President Bill Clinton will be come to New Jersey on Saturday to campaign for Assemblywoman Linda Stender’s (D-Fanwood) Congressional bid, according to a Democrat close to the campaign. The time, place and date have not yet been set, but it will be somewhere in the 7th District, where Stender is facing off against State Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Flemington).  PolitickerNJ.com will have more details as the schedule takes shape. 

CLICK HERE TO READ WALLY EDGE'S VIEW OF WHAT THE CLINTON VISIT MEANS TO THE 7TH DISTRICT RACE

If Republicans Scott Garrett, Christopher Myers and Leonard Lance win hotly contested House races next week, it is unlikely that Democrats would invest heavily in these traditionally GOP districts again in 2010.  But Democratic victories would make these districts battlegrounds in the 2010 mid-term elections.

If Garrett survives -- Politicker.com's The Pindell Report has the seat as Leans Republican -- he'll have a firm lock on the 5th district seat until at least 2012, when mapmakers draw new congressional districts.  But if blind Rabbi Dennis Shulman upsets Garrett, he'd immediately become one of the nation's most vulnerbale Democratic Congressmen. There is already talk among some Bergen County Republicans that Assemblyman David Russo would enter the race to challenge Shulman in 2010.  Russo sought the seat six years ago when Marge Roukema retired and lost to Garrett 45%-24% after splitting the Bergen GOP vote with State Sen. Gerald Cardinale.

Third Congressional

To the most hardened observer of New Jersey politics, the 3rd Congressional District race offers little more than the inevitable collision of two powerful forces in this conservative, military family values stronghold, which runs up to the edges of Democratic Party bulwark Camden County to the south.

It appears to be a classic case of military industrial complex versus party machine, as Republican Chris Myers, a $250,000-a-year earning Republican executive at Lockheed Martin, battles Harvard-educated career Trentonian state Sen. John Adler (D-Camden) for a seat vacated by U.S. Rep. Jim Saxton (R-Burlington).

Assembly Speaker – and Adler compatriot -Joe Roberts (D-Camden) argues that the only way South Jersey ever stood a chance of exerting influence statewide was to bind together.

Normal 0 Big Oil Donates to Lance to Continue Failed Bush Energy Policy

State Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) and state Sen. Diane Allen (R-Hunterdon)

 FLEMINGTON – The Stender supporters started lining up on the sidewalk in front of the old Hunterdon County Courthouse moments before state Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) arrived with a contingent of women for Lance, including state Sen. Diane Allen (R-Burlington), and his wife.

Some bitter back and forth ensued between the Stender and Lance women on the state senator’s home turf of this 7th Congressional District, where Assemblywoman Linda Stender (D-Fanwood) and Lance are in a toss-up battle to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-New Providence).

For a few minutes it looked as though the women here thought they could settle things on their own, in Flemington’s version of “Street Fight.”