Peter Frelinghuysen

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U.S. Rep. Jim Saxton (R-Mt. Holly) will retire tomorrow after 24 years in the U.S. House of Representatives.

When Jim Saxton and Mike Ferguson leave Congress tomorrow, New Jersey will have nineteen living former Congressmen.  The oldest is Peter H.B. Frelinghuysen, the 93-year-old father of U.S. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen.  He first won an open seat in 1952 and served until his retirement in 1974.  The youngest is the soon-to-be-unemployed Michael Pappas, 48, a Republican who won an open seat in 1996 and lost his bid for re-election to a second term two years later.  Pappas works for the Small Business Administration and will likely lose his job when the new administration takes office this month.

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'Deep Throat' Mark Felt died today yesterday at age 95.

As a Republican Congressman who served out his final term during the Watergate scandal, Peter H.B. Frelinghuysen did not know Mark Felt, the FBI’s number two man who turned out to be the famous “Deep Throat.”

But, reflecting on Felt’s passing yesterday at the age of 95, Frelinghuysen said he did the right thing by leaking information to Bob Woodward, and wishes there were more whistleblowers like him.

“If it’s something that should be talked about, we should talk about it,” said Frelinghuysen, 92, whose family has been prominent in New Jersey politics for over two centuries. “The sad part about Nixon was we were ready to impeach him if he hadn’t resigned.”

Frelinghuysen entered the House in 1953 – the same year Dwight Eisenhower took over the presidency. But unlike many of his fellow Republicans in the mid-1970s anti-Nixon wave, Frelinghuysen’s retirement was not forced. After 22 years, he felt he had been in office long enough in his safe district.

Looking back on it, Frelinghuysen has a hard time understanding he motivations behind the players of the Watergate scandal.

U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone will become more powerful with the victory of Henry Waxman in the race for House Energy and Commerce Chairman

Henry Waxman defeated John Dingell by 15 votes today to win the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the most powerful posts in Congress.  One of the big winners of the day was New Jersey’s Frank Pallone, who played a key role in Waxman’s successful insider effort.  Pallone, who chairs the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee, is likely to have expanded clout under Waxman.   Sources suggest that seven of eight New Jersey House Democrats backed Waxman; Rob Andrews was a whip in Dingell’s losing bid for re-election.

There is some irony to Andrews’ role in helping to re-elect an 82-year-old chairman who has been elected to Congress 27 times, considering his own challenge to 84-year-old incumbent Frank Lautenberg in the 2008 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.  Dingell was in Congress for 27 years before Lautenberg won his campaign.

Democrats and Republicans seem to agree that 84-year-old U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg did just fine in his debate this week with Republican Dick Zimmer.  The George Allen/James Stockdale kind of moment Republicans were hoping for never happened; pundits from both sides say that Lautenberg won it on his own merits.  Zimmer complained that this was the first Senate campaign in years that didn't include a debate on New York and Philadelphia network affiliate television (this debate was on NJ101.5 radio, and Saturday's on New Jersey Public Television) -- a move that got him in a ton of trouble with NJ101.5's The Jersey Guys.

New Jersey has eighteen living former Congressmen -- that number should go to twenty next year with the retirements of Jim Saxton and Michael Ferguson:

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. -- At 62, Rodney Frelinghuysen is already three years older than his father, Peter Hood Ballantine Frelinghuysen, Jr., was when he retired from Congress in 1975.

Frelinghuysen said his father left office in 1975 – when he was in his late 50s -- to spend more time with his family.

“I think it was in large part that he had five children, and I think he wanted time with family,” he said. “I grew up for 22 years of my life with my father as a member of congress, and I’m not singling out myself, but I don’t remember my father ever coming to a game or any sporting event.”

Leonard Lance has spent his entire life around the political arena: by the time he was born in 1952, his father, Wesley Lance, had already served as an Assemblyman and State Senator (he returned to the Senate for another two terms in 1953).  Now that Lance is running for Congress, PolitickerNJ.com’s Matt Friedman asked him to name his all-time favorite Congressmen.  Lance listed three: Charles Eaton, Robert Winthrop Kean, and Millicent Fenwick.

Former U.S. Rep. Peter Frelinghuysen, who turned 92 today, said he favors Sen. John McCain for president and former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney as his second choice.

"He has great integrity, and he sticks to his guns while everyone else hedges," said Frelinghuysen, who knew McCain’s late father, Navy Admiral John Sidney McCain, Jr., commander of the U.S. Pacific Command during the Vietnam War.

"The father was a short and very lively military man, somewhat like his son," Frelinghuysen recalled.

Peter Frelinghuysen served in Congress from 1953 to 1975Peter H.B. Frelinghuysen, who represented New Jersey in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1953 to 1975, celebrates his 92nd birthday today. He is New Jersey’s oldest living former Congressman, and the tenth oldest in the nation. He is one of just ten living members of the House freshman Class of 1952 – which included current U.S. Senator Robert Byrd; there is no living Member of Congress whose service predates Frelinghuysen’s.

Henry Alexander Smith represented New Jersey in the U.S. Senate from 1944 to 1959.H. Alexander Smith was a late bloomer in New Jersey politics. Born in New York, he spent twelve years practicing law in Colorado Springs (his nephew, Peter Dominick, was the Senator from Colorado before losing his seat to Gary Hart in 1974) and worked at the U.S. Food Administration in Washington during World War II. He moved to New Jersey at age 39 to become Executive Secretary of Princeton University, and was elected New Jersey's Republican National Committeeman 23 years later.

After U.S. Senator Warren Barbour died in office at the end of 1943, Smith decided to run for the United States Senate. He was 64-years-old when he defeated Congressman Elmer Wene, a onetime chicken farmer from Cumberland County, by 25,725 votes -- a 50%-49% margin. He was re-elected in 1946 (by nearly nineteen percentage points against Camden Mayor George Brunner) and again in 1952, by a 56%-44% margin over Archibald Alexander.