Louis Bassano

Assemblyman Eric Munoz (R-Summit) passed away on Monday at the age of 61.

Eric Munoz first went to the Legislature in 2001 amidst a game of political musical chairs in the old 21st district, which was about equally divided between Essex and Union counties.  The six -term State Senator, Republican Louis Bassano, resigned to take a job at the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority.  The district had already been chopped up, with Bassano's home town, Union, being placed in the heavily-Democratic 20th district, where Raymond Lesniak was the Senator.

Assemblyman Kevin O'Toole won a special election for Bassano's State Senate seat, knowing that he would return to the Assembly eight months later.  His hometown, Cedar Grove, had already been redistricted into District 40, which was represented in the Senate by Henry "Tapioca" McNamara. 

Munoz defeated former Cranford Mayor Thomas Denny in a special election convention to fill O'Toole's Assembly seat.  At this point, four incumbent Assemblymen lived in the new 21st district: Richard Bagger, Thomas Kean, Jr. (who had won a special election convention earlier that year after Alan Augustine died in office), and Joel Weingarten, an Essex County Republican who had beaten Kean and Michael Ferguson to win the Union County GOP Convention in his 2000 campaign for Congress.  Bagger was unopposed for the GOP State Senate nomination; the incumbent, Senate President and Acting Governor Donald DiFrancesco, was not running for the Legislature.

Raymond Lesniak moved up to the Senate in 1983 after John Gregorio's criminal conviction.

After today's special election convention in District 23, a full one-quarter of the Senate will have entered the upper house by way of a special election: Raymond Lesniak (1983), Ronald Rice (1986), John Girgenti (1990), Robert Singer (1993), Thomas Kean, Jr. (2003), Paul Sarlo (2003), Loretta Weinberg (2005), Sandra Cunningham (2007), and James Beach (2009).  An eleventh Senator, Kevin O'Toole, initially served in the Senate in 2001 after winning a special election convention; he later returned to the Assembly and won a Senate seat in November 2007.

Lesniak replaced John Gregorio, who left the Senate following his criminal conviction.  Rice, Girgenti and Singer were elected following the deaths of Senators John Caufield, Frank Graves and John Dimon, respectively.  Kean took the seat of Richard Bagger, who resigned to concentrate on his career at Pfizer.  Sarlo became a Senator when the incumbent, Garry Furnari, was appointed to serve as a Superior Court Judge.  Weinberg won the seat of Byron Baer, who resigned for health reasons.  Cunningham replaced Joseph Doria, who resigned to become state Community Affairs Commissioner.  Beach, the most recent addition to the Senate won a special election convention after John Adler was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

One Union County GOP leader says he will talk to state Republicans to gauge their interest in targeting Neil Cohen’s 20th district Assembly seat in the November 2008 presidential election.  His candidate is C. Louis Bassano, who represented part of the district in the State Senate from 1982 to 2001, and in the State Assembly from 1972 to 1974, and from 1976 to 1982.  Don’t expect Bassano, who left for a job at the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, to return to Trenton.

The other Senate race already taking shape is in the 21st district, where Republican Assemblymen Eric Munoz and Jon Bramnick are already getting their ducks in order in the event that State Senator Tom Kean, Jr. wins the 2006 U.S. Senate race. Kean would resign his Senate seat in January 2007, necessitating a Special Election Convention to fill the remaining year of his current term. Munoz and Bramnick are no strangers to the Special Election Convention -- that's the way each of them got to the Legislature in the first place: Munoz won in 2001 when Kevin O'Toole replaced Louis Bassano in the State Senate; Bramnick won in 2003 when Kean took Richard Bagger's Senate seat -- he defeated Phil Morin, now the Union County Republican Chairman, by just three votes. Republicans say this contest would be decided a the convention and that the winner would be unlikely to receive a challenge in the June primary. The elevation of one of the two Assemblymen would, of course, trigger another Special Election Convention for an open Assembly seat -- the fourth in this district in five years.