The buzz among Republican insiders over the last two days is that party leaders seem genuinely excited by the prospects of millionaire businessman Andy Unanue entering the race for United States Senator.  The former Chief Operating Officer of Goya Foods, one of the largest Hispanic-owned businesses in the United States, makes an interesting candidate: a self-funder who his 44 years younger than the incumbent and can compete for Latino votes.

Prof. Murray Sabrin, a Ron Paul Republican, has scheduled a Legalizing Freedom College Tour: Joe Pennacchio, under fire for his Naionalist manifesto, calls Sabrin a "fringe" candidate
U.S. Senate candidate Murray Sabrin has found a novel way to appeal to young voters: let them drink.

Sabrin is kicking off his Legalizing Freedom College Tour by calling on the elimination of the national minimum drinking age of 21 in favor of allowing states to come up with their own ages.

Over the next month, Sabrin will visit four New Jersey college campuses to try to get youngsters riled up for his campaign. He’s planned stops at William Paterson University, Stevens Institute of Technology, Fairleigh Dickinson University and Brookdale Community college.

His call for drinking age reform is one example of his campaign to “legalize freedom,” he said.

Passaic County Republicans endorsed Joseph Pennacchio for U.S. Senate tonight – the first contest since the publication of a controversial nationalist manifesto that he wrote seventeen years ago.  Pennacchio has represented a part of Passaic County in the Legislature since 2001.

State Sen. Joe Pennacchio never had the enthusiastic support of most party leaders for his U.S. Senate candidacy. But just as it seemed like they had no option other than to coalesce around him instead of rival candidate Murray Sabrin, the latest turn in the campaign has caused several leaders to make one last push for a Senate candidate.

The reemergence of Pennacchio’s controversial 1991 booklet yesterday as a campaign issue has worried the party leaders who were already reluctant to get on board with Pennacchio, and they have renewed their efforts to find an alternate candidate. Although the existence of the book was known to many party leaders, many had not read it until Sabrin released it yesterday. Some fear that incumbent Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg will have a field day with the material, leading to a Lautenberg landslide that could spell trouble for their down-ballot candidates.

“We’re still fishing, we just haven’t gotten a fish,” said one Republican official who wished to remain anonymous. “We’ve got a lot of bait in the water.”

It’s a valid concern, according to Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murray.

“This is how Democrats win landslide elections in New Jersey -- by having the ability to paint the Republicans as ideologically out of touch with the state,” said Murray, who noted two statewide races in which Democrats were able to successfully portray their opponents as ideologues: Democrat Jim Florio did against Republican Jim Courter in 1989, as did Democrat Jim McGreevey against Republican Brett Schundler in 2001.

A powerful Republican County Chairman, who asked that his identity be withheld, said that a nationalist manifesto written in 1991 by State Sen. Joseph Pennacchio won’t prevent him from winning the June Republican U.S. Senate primary – but would likely hurt his chances to unseat incumbent Frank Lautenberg in the general election. The Chairman said that the 94-page document, which Pennacchio backed away from a bit late this afternoon, is a “plethora of opposition research” for the Democrats and could make Pennacchio a non-starter against the 84-year-old incumbent.

Some of the ideas Joe Pennacchio wrote 17 years ago may seem unusual – or to Republican rival Murray Sabrin, even “fascist.”

But Pennacchio said they’re nothing more than ideas he penned years before he held public office. Some, he says, have been proven to be good ideas. Others he’s “evolved” beyond.

The important thing, Pennacchio says, is that even before he entered the political realm, he was thinking of ways to help his country.

“Keep in mind that was written by a non-politician as a series of position papers for my own edification. I bound them together, paid for it myself and it wasn’t published,” said Pennacchio. “All it shows is that even 18 years ago I was thinking about the problems that affect this country and how we deal with them.”

Seventeen years after it was written, a booklet authored by U.S. Senate candidate Joe Pennacchio has reemerged as a campaign issue.

Pennacchio’s Republican rival, Murray Sabrin, has begun distributing copies of the book, calling it a “fascist manifesto” and demanding that Pennacchio not only drop his Senate candidacy, but resign from his state Senate seat as well. Sabrin plans to hold a press conference on the topic this afternoon.

This is not the first time that work has been raised in a political campaign. In 1994, when Pennacchio challenged Dean Gallo in the Republican congressional primary, excerpts were taken and distributed by Gallo’s campaign.

But Pennacchio argues that the book was a series of policy papers he wrote years ago filled with some ideas that he still holds true to, along with some ideas that he has “evolved” beyond.

The book, entitled The Nationalist Agenda: A Blueprint for the 21st Century and written under the pen name “Joseph Penn,” advocates setting up an organization called “The Nationalist Party” to challenge the conventional wisdom of Democrats and Republicans.