Mike Ferguson

Outgoing Rep. Mike Ferguson, who chaired Anne Evans Estabrook’s U.S. Senate campaign and has known her since he was a child, said that she made the right decision by dropping out of the race. 

"As the chairman of Anne’s campaign, I’m confident she would be an excellent Senator for New Jersey, but as her friend I believe she made the right decision to end her campaign,” he said.  "I am proud of Anne’s leadership and public service and her commitment to improve

Assemblyman Jon Bramnick, Assemblyman Eric Munoz, Sen. Thomas Kean, and U.S. Rep. Mike Ferguson soak in one of the speeches.

WESTFIELD - The word going into that first round of voting at the Union County Republican Convention on Saturday was that former Summit Councilwoman Kelly Hatfield and Scotch Plains Mayor Martin Marks would require a second showdown.

"This is going to a runoff between the top two candidates," said John DeSimone, commissioner for the county Board of Elections as he waded into the crowd of delegates. And that’s exactly how it went down at Westfield High School, where Hatfield eventually prevailed over Marks with 60% of the vote in the Union County GOP’s pre-primary battle for the line in the 7th District Congressional race.

Because of his Hunterdon County base, Leonard Lance starts as the front runner in the Republican primary to succeed Mike Ferguson in New Jersey's seventh congressional district, but he faces a formidable challenge from Kate Whitman, the 30-year-old daughter of the former Governor, and from a pair of candidates from Union County.

Lance has two main problems: he's a horrific fundraiser, as evidenced by his inability to properly fund Republican Senate races after serving as Minority Leader for the last four years; and Republicans are worried that he lacks the ability to step up and run the kind of tough campaign the GOP thinks they need to hold the seat against Linda Stender in the General Election. 

PEAPACK-GLADSTONE - Kate Whitman has been in the seventh district congressional race three months now, but she made her formal entrance announcement today at a kickoff event at the council chambers nestled in the hills of her quiet, semi-rural hometown of Peapack-Gladstone.

The event was a family affair, attended by her mother, former Gov. Christie Whitman, her husband, brother and young twin sons, while a big portion of the audience was made up of young mothers with towheaded toddlers.

At this point in the race, with eight other candidates in the field, it's hard for the 30-year-old Whitman to claim momentum. State Sen. Leonard Lance easily won an endorsement in his home county of Hunterdon last night. The next convention is Union County, where Whitman concedes that the committee vote will likely be split between former Summit Councilwoman P. Kelly Hatfield and Scotch Plains Mayor Martin Marks. She's hoping that she'll be able to pull off a victory in Somerset, but that's not a given, considering that there are five candidates from the county in the race, while all three of its legislators have endorsed Lance.

But Whitman said that getting the county line isn't everything, and that she has no plans of dropping out, even if she wins no conventions.

"I'm in it until June," she said.

U.S. Rep. Mike Ferguson faces the crowd in Hunterdon.

FLEMINGTON- After hearing one of his would-be successors refer dismally to his recent re-election struggles, retiring U.S. Rep. Mike Ferguson of the 7thdistrict went to the microphone to offer a good-natured rebuttal.

"When I saw Mike Ferguson going down steadily," Dr. A.D. Amar, a professor of business management at Seton Hall University and low or no-hoper in this GOP primary race, said in his remarks, he felt compelled to get more involved in politics.

"He won with only 3,000 votes," Amar reminded the crowd in Plaza One in Flemington, and there was an uneasy murmuring as people glanced nervously at Ferguson, who stood smiling amid a cluster of other ruffled Republicans.

"Democrats are making huge inroads into the district," said Amar, standing under a portrait of President George W. Bush.

The schedule for county organization endorsements in the 2008 Republican primary for Mike Ferguson’s seventh district House seat:

GOP congressional candidate Kate Whitman will formally enter the race for Mike Ferguson’s House seat tomorrow.  Her campaign says she will layout her six-point plan to “get America moving.”  Whitman, the daughter of former Governor (and PolitickerNJ.com unpaid columnist) Christine Todd Whitman, faces State Senator Leonard Lance and others in the seventh district Republican primary.

They're not state Senators or gubernatorial offspring. They don't come from political dynasties and don't have powerful county organizations backing them.

But in the third and seventh congressional districts, there are eight lower-profile Republican candidates, considered second-tier to the likes of state Sen. Leonard Lance, Kate Whitman, Medford Mayor Chris Myers and Ocean County Freeholder Director Jack Kelly. And those candidates want to stress that even without a famous name or a powerful county organization behind them, they can have an impact on these races.

One of the longest shot candidates on the ballot in either district is Suzanne Penna, a 37-year-old nursing student from Bayville who's only been involved in politics for the last year and a half. It won't be her first time facing Kelly in a primary.

One person who won’t have much influence in the next Administration: Congressman Michael Ferguson. The four-term Republican, who is not seeking re-election this year, endorsed Mitt Romney for President the week before the New Jersey primary; Romney dropped out one week later.

District 7 U.S. Rep. Mike Ferguson has endorsed former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney for president, according to Sen. Joseph Kyrillos, state chairman for the Romney campaign.