Martin Marks

Former Scotch Plains Mayor Martin Marks, left, gets former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie to autograph Marks's copy of "The Soprano State."

ROSELLE PARK – He said last year he would be the perfect candidate to take on Linda Stender, and former Scotch Plains Mayor Martin Marks may still believe that, as he mulls over a challenge of the 22nd District Assemblywoman, who also lost her own Congressional bid and now faces reelection to the Assembly.

“I’d say it’s about a 50% percent chance that I’ll run,” said Marks, who served as mayor of Scotch Plains for eight years and failed twice to move up: once in a State Senate bid in 2003 and again in his 2008 Republican Primary bid for Congress.  

“It’s a tough district,” said Marks, remembering how Nicholas Scutari, buried him in the City of Plainfield.

GOP candidate for governor Chris Christie arrives at the party at the Marco Polo on Thursday evening.

SUMMIT –To the oft-muttered intra-party charge that Republicans plan to coronate former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie as their candidate for governor, Union County Republican Chairman Phil Morin said his organization stands on its record. 

Last year, millionaire businesswoman Anne Evans Estabrook was supposedly the money candidate for U.S. Senate. Then the county committee here awarded the line to erstwhile underdog state Sen. Joseph Pennacchio (R-Morris), dropping the jaws of not only Estabrook’s campaign infrastructure but the party establishment in all 21 counties.  

After Estabrook pulled the plug on her candidacy owing to health problems, Morin resisted pressure to hold another convention to dump Pennacchio and swap in the state GOP’s latest frontrunner, former U.S. Rep. Dick Zimmer, who would ultimately go on to secure the statewide nomination. 

Morin’s view was Jersey Joe earned it the hard way, he should have it.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dick Zimmer as he appeared in ABC television debate on Sunday.SOMERVILLE - State Sen. Joseph Pennacchio (R-Morris) never convinced party leaders that he could be the darling of the GOP, most of whom instead backed former U.S. Rep. Dick Zimmer for U.S. Senate.

Now, with a full day remaining before Election Day, maverick conservative leader Steve Lonegan, a former mayor of Bogota and gubernatorial candidate, says he will vote for Pennacchio, while questioning Zimmer’s ability to generate energy among rank-and-file Republicans.

         Mayor Martin Marks arranged a meeting with a former and current police chief of his town to strategize about how to smear a Democratic opponent in a local election in 2006. 

Clockwise from lower left: Leonard Lance, AD Amar, Martin Marks, Darren Young, Kelly Hatfield, Thomas Roughneen, Kate Whitman. 

MOUNTAINSIDE - The seven Republican candidates for Congress in the 7th District debated at Town Hall here on Thursday night in a one-hour forum moderated by Fred Rossi of the Westfield Leader and Scotch Plains Fanwood Times.

As expected, most of the criticism flew in the direction of state Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon), who in turn directed his ire at the $10 trillion national debt.

Iraq War veteran Thomas Roughneen of Watchung attacked Lance’s environmental advocacy, while Scotch Plains Mayor Martin Marks and businesswoman Kate Whitman of Peapack-Gladstone blasted him for not being a more effective fighter in state government for property tax relief.

MOUNTAINSIDE - Martin Marks, mayor of Scotch Plains for the past nine years and a candidate for Congress in the 7th Congressional District, spent mush of the evening targeting presumed front-runner state Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon).

"I am unafraid to stand up to members of my own party when they don't act, when they should have," he said.

But when Iraq War veteran Thomas Roughneen and busineswoman Kate Whitman went after Marks on taxes, the mayor chastised both of them.

MOUNTAINSIDE - Kelly Hatfield gets the crowd in Town Hall here toFormer Summit Councilwoman Kelly Hatfield clap for the "great Republican farm team we have," while Martin Marks takes verbal slaps at Kate Whitman and Thomas Roughneen and praises Hatfield.

"You two are the probably the youngest people on this dais," Marks tells Whitman and Roughneen, seated to his right and left.

"Why don’t you walk a mile in our shoes?" he asks, referring them to local elected officials.

MOUTAINSIDE - Sen. Leonard Lance goes for in-the-chamber gravitas inSen. Leonard Lance and his wife, Heidi, on Thursday night after the debate his closing remarks, and goes after Assemblywoman Linda Stender, the Democratic candidate for the 7th Congressional District.

After fielding blows from Roughneen, Whitman and Marks, Lance compliments them all for their various professional qualities, and makes positive comments about the other candidates, including Professor AD Amar and former Summit Councilwoman Kelly Hatfield.

"What I would like to think I bring to this race is experience in Trenton on the transcendent issue of our time - fiscal responsibility," says the state senator, who wants to take a shot at reducing the country’s $10 trillion debt.

MOUNTAINSIDE - With State Sen. Leonard Lance staying out of theState Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) line of fire, Martin Marks and Thomas Roughneen let off some steam.

As part of a two-minute statement, and in a clear diss of Lance, Scotch Plains Mayor Marks says he has been "unafraid" to confront leaders in his own party.

"Anybody in the Legislature is by definition a failure on the critical issue of property taxes," Marks says. "Republicans held it (power) in 90s, Democrats held it in this decade, and I ask you why do we keep going back tot he people who fail us?"

Roughneen piggy-backs on that, but expands the criticism to include Marks.

"I have not been part of this," Roughneen says of the leadership by both parties that has created what he says is a property tax crisis in New Jersey.

MOUTAINSIDE - Newspaper editor Fred Rossi asks Kate Whitman toKate Whitman grade George W. Bush as a commander-in-chief.

"The important thing is not how we got there but what we would do now that we’re there," she says.

Likening herself to the Speaker of the House, Whitman says, "I don’t think I or Nancy Pelosi" should second guess the decision by generals in the field.

Then Sen. Leonard Lance takes a question about whether we are winning the war on terror.

Scotch Plains Mayor Martin Marks"Yes," he says. "We have not had another attack since 9/11. But we have to be vigilant."

He blasts the president of Iran and urges alertness in the face of aggression by Iran. He gives a shout-out to Sen. John McCain and his "magnificent" service in the Vietnam War.

Now it’s Martin Marks’s turn to talk about the Middle East.

"This will continue to be an unstable region," he says. "I don’t think it’s been made more problematic by our presence there."