Matthew Holt

A new State Senator will be elected on Saturday to replace newly-elected U.S. Rep. Leonard Lance (R-Clinton).

Tomorrow is Election Day in Hunterdon County, where Assemblyman Michael Doherty and Assemblywoman Marcia Karrow will face off in a special election convention to replace Leonard Lance as the State Senator from the 23rd district. Lance resigned his State Senate seat earlier this month to take his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Doherty is widely considered to be the front runner, but insider contests decided by County Committee members can produce some surprises in a race where no polling of a finite universe of voters has been conducted.  Either way, District 23 Republican County Committee members will need to return soon to fill the soon-to-be vacant Assembly seat of the winner.  Three Freeholders - Matthew Holt and Erik Peterson of Hunterdon and John DiMaio of Warren - are already announced candidates for the Assembly.  A fourth candidate, Bloomsbury Mayor Mark Peck, is also mulling an Assembly bid.

Hunterdon County Freeholder Matthew Holt this week released the names of elected officials endorsing him for the Assembly in the 23rd District. 

"From the very first announcement of my intent to run to represent the 23rd Legislative District last November, the outpouring of support has been overwhelming,” said Holt, who originally contemplated a run for the state senate seat vacated by U.S. Rep. Leonard Lance (R-Clinton).

“Since following the advice of my campaign committee, and seeking the anticipated Assembly seat, the support base has grown, and continues to grow daily,” added the Republican candidate.  “Having spent the past 15 years serving at every level, from school board, to councilmember, mayor, and freeholder, coupled with my ownership of a small business in the county, I bring with me a strong understanding of the needs of our district.”

Assemblywoman Marcia Karrow (R-Flemington)

In the 23rd Legislative District, Assemblywoman Marcia Karrow (R-Flemington) has won the support of the Hunterdon County Republican Executive Committee to move up to the state senate seat of outgoing Congressman-elect Leonard Lance (R-Clinton).

The 18-member committee chose to back Karrow over Assemblyman Mike Doherty (R-Washington Twp.) and Hunterdon County Freeholder Matt Holt "overwhelmingly," according to Hunterdon County Republican Chairman Henry Kuhl.

The decision is not particularly surprising, as Karrow has been expected to win organizational support from her native county. But it reinforces a geographical advantage Karrow has over Doherty and Holt in a contest where Republican committee members from Hunterdon and the less populous Warren County will decide who gets to fill in for Lance until next January. As it has more residents, Hunterdon County has roughly 40 vote advantage over Warren County.

Although not all members will vote strictly along geographical lines, Kuhl said that the executive committee's support will probably have some influence.

"It has an influence, but I think what is also very important is [Karrow] had 14 Hunterdon mayors and eight Warren County mayors endorse her," said Kuhl.

As the battle to replace outgoing state Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Clinton) takes shape, the two declared candidates are beginning to make incursions outside of their home bases.

Assemblyman Mike Doherty (R-Washington Township), a Warren County legislator who began his campaign a day after he learned that Lance was moving up to Congress, feels encouraged by the response he’s received from the Hunterdon County committee men and women he’s met on the campaign trail so far. But some insiders argue that Assemblywoman Marcia Karrow (R-Flemington), a Hunterdon County native who just made her candidacy official last week, should not be counted out among the Warren County committee members, despite local contentions that the county will be in lock-step behind Doherty.

A third candidate, Hunterdon County Freeholder Matthew Holt, appears to be ready to run, and will formally announce his bid either next week or the week after.

The county committee members from Hunterdon and Warren Counties will meet in either January or early February to decide who gets to be Lance’s interim replacement in the state senate. In June, a primary will be held to determine who gets to remain on the ballot for the November general election, when voters will select a candidate to fill the two remaining years of Lance’s term in this safely Republican district.

This race is more complicated than a regional battle between the Hunterdon and Warren County Republican organizations.

Assemblywoman Marcia Karrow and Hunterdon County Freeholder Matthew Holt are both potential candidates for Leonard Lance's 23rd district State Senate seat

Assemblyman Michael Doherty seems to be playing out of the Bill Baroni playbook: Doherty is rapidly rolling out endorsements to scare the Assemblywoman from his district out of a race for an open State Senate seat.  Two weeks after Leonard Lance won a seat in Congress, the Doherty for Senate campaign is in high gear, and Marcia Karrow has a deer-in-headlights thing going on as she mulls her own chances to move up to the Senate. 

Karrow, according to Republican leaders that have spoken with her, believed her Hunterdon County base would propel her to victory in a special election convention where the voters as GOP County Committee members.  But Karrow is reportedly frightened to give up her Assembly seat and move up to the Senate, just to be taken out by Doherty in a Republican primary, where the conservative Warren County legislator might have an advantage.  If Karrow passes on the race (she may have to now that she's lost two crucial weeks in a short campaign -- Doherty is now the strong front runner to succeed Lance), it is because of her fear of being out of a job after just one year in the State Senate.

One possible miscalculation by Karrow: Doherty is a blinker who has already passed up a number of chances to run for higher office, including a primary challenge against Lance last year and a race for the U.S. Senate.  Had Karrow been the incumbent Senator, it's possible that Doherty would have blinked and not given up his Assemblys seat to run for Senator.

The retirements of Congressmen Jim Saxton and Mike Ferguson offers the potential for an interesting game of political musical chairs.

In District 3, if John Adler goes to Congress, look for Louis Greenwald to replace him in the State Senate.  That will open up a sixth district Assembly seat that Cherry Hill might claim, although that decision will be made by party leaders.  Most of the Cherry Hill Councilmembers are potential candidates, and one interesting replacement for Greenwald would be Councilwoman Shelley Adler, whose husband could be a Congressman.  This is a safe Democratic district, and legislators picked at a Special Election Convention would be virtual shoo-ins for the November 2009 elections.

Hunterdon County Freeholder Matthew Holt says Leonard Lance should run for Congress, and that if the Senate Minority Leader ultimately declines to run, he would consider seeking the GOP nomination.

Holt is the grandson of former U.S. Sen. Clifford Case, who served as Congressman in the 7th district from 1945 to 1953 before moving to the Senate in 1955.

Lance has expressed interest in entering the seat that became available on Monday when Mike Ferguson announced he would not seek re-election.

Clifford Case represented the 7th district from 1945 to 1953Born in Rahway in his grandfather's house when the 7th Congressional district included that tough prison town, Matt Holt remembers U.S. Sen. Clifford Case as a public servant who put the common good ahead of partisan politics.

Case's career included four terms in the House representing the 7th district and four terms in the Senate, and now 25 years after his death, grandson Holt is considering a run for Congress.

"The single biggest challenge is to return to the art of negotiation," says Holt, 49, a Hunterdon County freeholder from Clinton, who served as the town's mayor for two years.

One prominent New Jersey political family had some success at the ballot box this year: former Clinton Mayor Matthew Holt was easily elected to the Hunterdon County Board of Freeholders. Holt is the grandson of Clifford P. Case, who represented New Jersey in the United States Senate from 1955 to 1979. Case, who also served as a Rahway Councilman, Assemblyman and Congressman, is the last Republican to win a U.S. Senate seat from New Jersey.