Mildred Barry Hughes

Left to right: Irene T. Griffin (R-Westfield), Florence P. Dwyer (R-Elizabeth), and Mildred Barry Hughes (D-Union Twp.)

Union County was a bit late when it came to electing women to the New Jersey Legislature, and then set some records by sending a woman to Congress and elected the first two women to the State Senate.  But Union County hasn't had a Republican Assemblywoman in almost 29 years.

Westfield Republican Irene Griffin became the first women to represent Union County in the State Assembly when won the seat in 1944 - two years after losing a GOP primary.  Griffin, a former Vice President of the Union County PTA, won the seat of Assemblyman Clifford Case (R-Rahway), who was seeking a seat in Congress. In the GOP primary, she placed fourth for four seats in a field of fourteen candidates.

She did not seek re-election in 1945 (until 1947, members of the lower house ran for one-year terms).  She sought to become the first woman in the State Senate in 1947, when Herbert Pascoe (R-Elizabeth) stepped down, but lost the GOP nod to Assemblyman Kenneth Hand (R-Elizabeth).

Griffin challenged incumbent Assemblywoman Florence Dwyer (R-Elizabeth) in the 1951 GOP primary, but was unsuccessful.  Dwyer defeated Griffin again in 1956, when the two faced off in a Republican congressional primary; in the general election, Dwyer unseated the incumbent Congressman, Harrison Williams (D-Plainfield).

New Jersey's first five women Senators, from left: Mildred Barry Hughes (D-Union Twp.), elected 1965; Jerry Fitzgerald English (D-Summit), elected 1971; Wynona Lipman (D-Newark), elected 1971; Anne Martindell (D-Princeton), elected 1973; and Alene Ammond (D-Cherry Hill), elected 1973.

When Marcia Karrow takes the oath of office today as the new State Senator from the 23rd district, she will become the tenth woman serving in the upper house – a full one-quarter of the total membership and the most women to serve in the Senate at one time.

Karrow becomes the second woman to represent part of Hunterdon County in the State Senate – Anne Martindell did it from 1974 to 1977 – she will become the first woman to represent Warren County in the Senate.

One third of New Jersey’s counties have never had non-white male representation in the Senate: Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland, Ocean, Salem, Sussex, and Somerset counties.

Republicans have held the 7th district House seat since 1956, when Florence Dwyer, an Assemblywoman from Elizabeth, unseated two-term Democrat Harrison Williams.  Matthew Rinaldo, who passed away on Monday at age 77, occupied the seat for twenty years.  Now, with the retirement of Michael Ferguson, Democrats are slightly favored to win the seat in a contest between Assemblywoman Linda Stender and her GOP rival, State Sen. Leonard Lance.

Rinaldo began his political career in 1962 when he won a seat on the Union County Board of Freeholders.  When he ran for re-election to a second term in 1965, he lost narrowly (the initial tally, before the recount, said just one vote) to Arthur Fried, a Democratic Councilman from Westfield.  He came back two years later, defeating State Sen. Mildred Barry Hughes, the first woman to serve in the New Jersey State Senate, by 10,657 votes -- a 57%-43% margin.  When he ran for re-election in 1971, Rinaldo ran more than 16,000 votes ahead of his running mate, Frank McDermott, and more than 25,000 votes ahead of his nearest Democratic rival.

Among the legendary stories about former State Senator Anne Martindell, who died yesterday at age 93, was her response to a 1972 assertion by old-time party insider Salvatore Bontempo, that “women don’t participate in our back room party meetings because they don’t want to hear four letter words”. Bontempo was the Democratic State Chairman and Martindell, then a Democratic National Committeewoman, was fairly blunt in her rebuke: “That’s a load of shit,” Martindell said. “I don’t need to be protected by Sal.”