Lyndon Johnson

Jon Corzine isn't the only Democrat to have problems with New Jersey labor unions. When R.J. Reynolds attempted to raise the price of a pack of cigarettes by 10% in 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson stepped in and imposed a 3.2% wage-price guideline on management and labor. But this ill-fated guideline seemed better at stopping industry from raising prices than labor from increasing wages.

Johnson's plan was in trouble when a New Jersey local of the International Union of Operating Engineers, already earning an hourly rate of $6.55, won a 10% pay hike from contractors. The White House used their national labor contacts to force the head of the New Jersey local, Peter Weber, to go to Washington and meet with Johnson's economic advisors. White House aides threatened to cut off about $200 million in federal aid for New Jersey transportation projects. Weber's response: he told the Johnson staff to "go to hell."

When Weber refused to back down, the Johnson administration knew they would have no luck imposing their wage-price guideline.

Footnote: Two years later, Johnson's Justice Department won a conviction against Weber. The federal prosecutor in that case was Herbert Stern, a former U.S. Attorney and U.S. District Court Judge who is now UMDNJ's federal monitor.

The death of Lloyd Bensten leaves George W. Bush as the only living Texan to never win electoral votes from New Jersey in a national campaign. Texans have traditionally run well in the Garden State: New Jersey voters have supported John Nance Garner (for Vice President in 1932 and 1936), Lyndon Johnson (for Vice President in 1960 and President in 1964), and George H.W. Bush (for Vice President in 1980 and 1984 and President in 1988), but not Bentsen, the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1988, or Bush, who lost New Jersey in 2000 and 2004.

When John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960, his U.S. Senate seat was filled by a college friend, Benjamin Smith, appointed by the Democratic Governor of Massachusetts at the request of the President-elect. Smith was a caretaker, serving until the youngest Kennedy brother became old enough to run. Ted Kennedy was 30-year-old when he ran for his brother's old seat in 1962. "If your name were Edward Moore instead of Edward Moore Kennedy, your candidacy would be a joke," said state Attorney General Edward McCormack, who challenged Kennedy in the Democratic primary. But his name was Kennedy: he easily won the primary and general elections.

President Lyndon Johnson appointed 39-year-old Ramsey Clark (in the news now as one of Sadaam Hussein's defense lawyers) as U.S. Attorney General in 1967, allegedly to entice U.S. Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark to retire. Johnson, at that point a candidate for re-election, wanted to appoint Thurgood Marshall as the first African American Justice. Clark resigned a few weeks after his son was confirmed -- to obviate a conflict of interest, he said. "Tom Clark was my biggest mistake," said President Harry Truman, who appointed him to the high court in 1947. "It isn't so much that he's a bad man. It's just that he's such a dumb son of a bitch."