Monroe Lustbader

Just to be clear, would-be candidates don't wait until funerals to begin campaigning for open seats.   It took Hudson County Democrats less than an hour to convene conferences following the death of Jersey City Mayor/State Sen. Glenn Cunningham died in 2004.  Campaigns were underway before the funerals of Assemblymen Melvin Cottrell (R-Jackson) and Thomas Smith (R-Asbury Park), and there were political discussions at the funerals of Assemblymen Monroe Lustbader (R-Short Hills) and Alan Augustine (R-Scotch Plains). 

It took less time for Essex Democrats to pick Evelyn Williams (D-Newark) for a State Assembly seat after the death of Donald Tucker (D-Newark) than it did to pick Oadline Truitt (D-Newark) after Williams was arrested for shoplifting days after she took office.

Posturing doesn't always wait for an actual death certificate.  When State Senators Byron Baer (D-Englewood) and Walter Kavanaugh (R-Somerville) became ill, potential successors began to shore up votes in anticipation of a retirement.  And make no mistake: the campaign to succeed 85-year-old U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg has been underway for the last eight months.

Democrats do not view the race for State Assembly in the 21st district as winnable even with the death of popular Assemblyman Eric Munoz (R-Summit) and are unlikely to put up much of a fight in November against the winner of a special election convention to fill the vacant State Assembly seat.  Munoz and Assembly Minority Whip Jon Bramnick won re-election by more than 10,000 votes in 2007.

Over the last fifty years, Linda Stender was one of just seven challengers – and one of only two Democrats – to come within two percentage points of unseat an incumbent Congressman when she held Michael Ferguson to a 49%-48% win in 2006. If she wins her second bid in 2008 for the seat Ferguson has decided to vacate, Stender would become the first member of the “I almost won” group to actually serve in Congress.

Two years ago, Ellen Steinberg was living in Chatham and making her second bid for the state legislature; this week she won election to the Millburn Township Committee as part of the first Democratic majority in town history. Steinberg lost a 2001 State Senate bid against Richard Bagger, and in 2003, she ran off the line and won the Democratic primary for State Assembly; she lost to incumbents John Bramnick and Eric Munoz.

Democrat Linda Lordi Cavanaugh will begin her third stint on the Essex County Board of Freeholders in January, after defeating incumbent Muriel Shore for the District IV seat. Democrats now have a 9-0 majority on the Freeholder Board, winning a seat that the Republicans have held since 1981. Essex began electing district Freeholders in 1978, after a change in the form of government, and the West Essex seat was won by one of the leaders of the '77 Charter Change movement, Democrat Renee Lane, who defeated Orange Mayor Carmine Capone. Lane lost in 1981 to Republican Monroe Lustbader, who held the seat until his election to the State Assembly in 1991 (he defeated Neil Cohen). Lustbader's replacement was the Mayor of Verona, Democrat-turned-Republican James Treffinger, who served until his election as County Executive in 1994. Treffinger was replaced by Verona Councilman Nicholas Rolli, who won a 1995 Special Election and a second term in 1996; when Rolli retired in 1999, he was replaced by another Verona Councilman, Republican James Paganelli, who won in 1999 and again in 2002. Paganelli resigned in 2003 to take a county job and was replaced by Shore, who held the seat in a Special Election.