Michael Pappas

John Adler won a seat in Congress eighteen years after his first House race.

Now it seems trendy to run for Congress, lose, then spend a lot of years in state government before finally making it to Washington.  In 2006, Albio Sires won an open House seat twenty years after his first attempt.  Sires had challenged U.S. Rep. Frank Guarini as a Republican in 1986; he later won local office in West New York, and after switching parties in 1999, he beat an incumbent Assemblyman in the Democratic primary.  He became Assembly Speaker after the 2001 election, and went to Congress after Bob Menendez joined the United States Senate.

Both of New Jersey's freshmen Congressman had previously lost House races.  John Adler ran against Jim Saxton in 1990 and lost 60%-40%.  A year later, despite one of the two biggest Republican landslides in state political history, he ousted four-term GOP State Sen. Lee Laskin.  Leonard Lance first ran for Congress in 1996, when Richard Zimmer gave up his seat to run for U.S. Senate; he finished third in the GOP primary, behind Michael Pappas and John Bennett. Lance moved from the Assembly to the Satate Senate in 2001, and became Minority Leader in 2004.

John Adler could be the first Democrat to capture a congressional seat (Jim Saxton's seat) in his district since Thomas Ferrell won in 1882, and Linda Stender, if she wins, she'll be the first Democrat to hold that seat (Mike Ferguson's seat) since Harrison Williams lost to Florence Dwyer in 1956.  New Jersey's House seats, with the last time the other party held them:

Congressman Christopher Smith will endorse Jack Kelly for Congress in the neighboring third district GOP primary, a move that insiders say is bugging his old friend, Jim Saxton.   Smith and Saxton have been allies since 1980, when Smith ousted a 13-term Democratic incumbent in a district that included Saxton’s hometown.  Saxton, an Assemblyman at the time, went to the State Senate in 1981, and after redistricting and the death of longtime GOP Congressman Edwin Forsythe, to Congress in 1984.  Saxton is backing Christopher Myers, the Deputy Mayor of Medford and a Vice President at Lockheed Martin.

The last time Leonard Lance ran for Congress was in 1996; he sought an open seat when Richard Zimmer ran for the United States Senate. In that GOP primary, Somerset County Freeholder Michael Pappas defeated Senate Majority Leader John Bennett by a 38%-34%, with Lance, then an Assemblyman, won 26%.

But Lance’s popularity among Republicans in Hunterdon County is undeniable, and Hunterdon is a key player in a seventh district Republican primary. And Union County, which has elected a Republican to Congress since Florence Dwyer ousted Harrison Williams in 1956, no longer dominates the district.

In 2006, 38% of Mike Ferguson’s primary votes came out of Hunterdon, while 29% came from Somerset, 27% from Union, and 6% from Middlesex.

Somerset County Democrats voted this evening to endorse Montgomery Township Mayor Louise Wilson and Somerville Councilman Dennis Sullivan as their candidates for Freeholder. Somerset Democrats have won two Freeholder races in the last 32 years: Frank Nero won in 1973, and Michael Ceponis was elected in 1979. In 1982, Ceponis and Nero ran together and were defeated by Christine Todd Whitman and Michael Pappas. Whitman spent two terms as Governor and Pappas served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives.

With the filing deadline less than one week away, the GOP has still not found a candidate to run against three-term Democratic Congressman Rush Holt. Republican County Conventions were held in Middlesex on Saturday and Mercer on Monday without selecting a candidate, but party leaders say they hope to find someone in time to appear at the Monmouth convention this weekend. Holt won the seat in a surprise upset against freshman GOP Congressman Michael Pappas in 1998 and was re-elected in 2000 by just 551 votes against former Congressman Richard Zimmer. After redistricting made the district far more Democratic-friendly, Holt won 62% against a much-heralded Republican challenger, former Secretary of State DeForest "Buster" Soaries in 2002, and 60% in 2004 against former College Republican National Chairman Bill Spadea.

by David P. Rebovich

2005 was supposed to be the year that angry suburbanites in New Jersey would turn out to vote against the Democrats in Trenton. That, of course, did not happen. Now the question is whether 2006 will be the year that those same suburbanites decide to vote against the Republicans in Washington, D.C., and in doing so replace a GOP congressman or two in the Garden State.

On page 823 of his book My Life, former President Bill Clinton says: " In New Jersey, a physics professor named Rush Holt was behind by 20% ten days before the election. He pushed one TV ad highlighting his opposition to impeachment, and won a seat no Democrat had held in a century." While Holt's victory over freshman Republican Congressman Michael Pappas was indeed stunning, Clinton wasn't technically correct about the seat being held by the GOP for a hundred years. Democrat Helen Meyner, the husband of former Governor Robert Meyner and a cousin of former Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, won in 1974 when she ousted one-term incumbent Joseph Maraziti in the Watergate landslide. Meyner held the seat in 1976, narrowly beating William Schluter, but lost her 1978 re-election campaign against James Courter. Courter left Congress in 1990 and was replaced by Republican Richard Zimmer, who was succeeded by Pappas when he ran for U.S. Senate in 1996. Clinton seems to have a genuine affinity for Holt; Clinton and Holt, both Southerners, were college professors who lost their first bids for public office. Holt's father, Rush Dew Holt, served as a United States Senator from West Virginia from 1935 (he was elected at age 29 and had to wait three months until he turned thirty) to 1941.