Peter Inverso

Assemblywoman Marcia Karrow and Hunterdon County Freeholder Matthew Holt are both potential candidates for Leonard Lance's 23rd district State Senate seat

Assemblyman Michael Doherty seems to be playing out of the Bill Baroni playbook: Doherty is rapidly rolling out endorsements to scare the Assemblywoman from his district out of a race for an open State Senate seat.  Two weeks after Leonard Lance won a seat in Congress, the Doherty for Senate campaign is in high gear, and Marcia Karrow has a deer-in-headlights thing going on as she mulls her own chances to move up to the Senate. 

Karrow, according to Republican leaders that have spoken with her, believed her Hunterdon County base would propel her to victory in a special election convention where the voters as GOP County Committee members.  But Karrow is reportedly frightened to give up her Assembly seat and move up to the Senate, just to be taken out by Doherty in a Republican primary, where the conservative Warren County legislator might have an advantage.  If Karrow passes on the race (she may have to now that she's lost two crucial weeks in a short campaign -- Doherty is now the strong front runner to succeed Lance), it is because of her fear of being out of a job after just one year in the State Senate.

One possible miscalculation by Karrow: Doherty is a blinker who has already passed up a number of chances to run for higher office, including a primary challenge against Lance last year and a race for the U.S. Senate.  Had Karrow been the incumbent Senator, it's possible that Doherty would have blinked and not given up his Assemblys seat to run for Senator.

Hamilton Mayor John BencivengoStrengthened by what he described as a "shared vision with my people, a cause to be accomplished and a dream come true," John Bencivengo officially became mayor of Hamilton today as he was sworn in by U.S. Rep. Chris Smith in the ballroom of the Nottingham Firehouse in front of a crowd of 350 people.

"I wish that I could have given a more cheerful address today," said Bencivengo in a nod to the town’s $10 million budget deficit. "But even if our fiscal circumstances had been better, even if we had ample surplus, I’d be saying the same things. It should be our goal, no matter the circumstances, to do more with less."

The former Republican Party municipal chairman and fired government worker ran and won on a platform of restoring common sense and accountability to government. Today Bencivengo swore always to remember that working families fund the town, and promised to present the 2009 budget on time in July.

He made the second of these vows in defiance of the record of his predecessor, Glen Gilmore, who sat on the document last year until a judge ruled he had to release it to the Township Council prior to the November election. The release of the 2008 budget, which initially showed a $5 million shortfall, helped propel the Republican Bencivengo to victory over Gilmore by fewer than 500 votes.

Party leaders and state officials are predicting a low turnout in this year's midterm legislative races. This, despite the low ratings that most New Jerseyans give the legislature and citizens deep concerns about high property taxes, political corruption, and the direction in which the state is headed. But with most legislative districts drawn to be safe, the high cost of mounting a serious challenge against an entrenched incumbent, and citizens' skepticism about either party's ability to solve the state's complex problems, folks simply don't seem to be excited this campaign season.

"We’re going to sweep in the 14th," boasts Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce, of the GOP ticket comprised of Assemblyman/State Senate candidate Bill Baroni and running mates Tom Goodwin and Adam Bushman.

The prediction assumes that Baroni’s star power will be sufficient to catapult Goodwin and Bushman into the State Assembly -- a bold statement given Democratic Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein’s reputation as a worker bee, and her four consecutive wins in a politically competitive district.

Republican Bill Baroni continues to run the table when it comes to labor endorsements in the 14th district State Senate race: today he won the endorsement of the Heat and Frost Insulators and Asbestos Workers Local 89 in his bid for the seat of retiring State Senator Peter Inverso.  Since entering the Senate race last spring, Baroni has been endorsed by the New Jersey AFL-CIO, the Communications Workers of America Local 1039, the New Jersey Education Association, and nearly a dozen others.  

Seema Singh’s campaign spokesman Tuesday said the Democratic State Senate candidate did nothing to violate the law, and has no intention of bowing out of the race in the wake of a complaint filed with the State Ethics Commission that as ratepayer advocate Singh hired her former chief of staff as a consultant six days after the staffer retired.

Singh herself termed the complaint going back to a 2003 incident "ridiculous," which campaign spokesman John Duthie backed up Tuesday in remarks made to PoliticsNJ.com.

"It’s an odd complaint," said Duthie. "It’s something that was filed over a year ago by a guy who wasn’t at the ratepayer’s counsel when she was. She’s done nothing illegal."

Seema Singh's campaign for the New Jersey State Senate is not going well. A Trenton Times story details an ethics complaint against her -- seemingly at the suggestion of her former boss, Public Advocate Ronald Chen. Last week, a Gannett story revealed that she accepted campaign contributions from top utility company executives just weeks after leaving her job as state Ratepayer Advocate. And Gannett columnist Bob Ingle wrote about the potential conflict of Singh's decision to hire political consultant Steve DeMicco, the husband of Board of Public Utilities Commission President Jeanne Fox.

The ethics investigation lends credibility to comments from Corzine administration officials that Singh was on the verge of being asked to leave state government. Some Democrats say her willingness to challenge popular GOP State Senator Peter Inverso was a face-saving exits strategy.

But Singh has qualified for the first round of public financing -- the only one out of eighteen possible candidates to do that so far -- and her GOP opponent, Assemblyman Bill Baroni, hasn't said a word about Singh's bad press -- not exactly the uber aggressive campaign New Jersey watched in April when Inverso announced his retirement.

Richard Perr and Elia Pelios filed ethics complaints today against seven state legislators.

The two Democratic County Chairmen alleged State Senators Joseph Kyrillos, Bob Singer and Peter Inverso, and Assemblymen Kevin O'Toole, David Wolfe, Christopher Connors and Rick Merkt may have profited by state budget items that supported. Democrats are alleging that a federal probe of how legislators might personally profit off specific state budget items is unfairly targeting just one party by looking only at actions since 2004, when Democrats first had complete control of both houses of the Legislature.

"These complaints are nothing more than a pathetic attempt by the Democrat machine to divert attention away from the fact that a laundry list of Democrats is being investigated by the FBI and US Attorney for using their office to enrich themselves. By their own admission, their complaints lack any merit or substance," said GOP State Chairman Tom Wilson. "Their failure to provide a shred of evidence to support their claims demonstrates that this is nothing more than a couple of political bosses looking to sully the good names of honest legislators to help their campaigns. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, though, since Chairman Perr has a history of filing bogus complaints. The ethics committee will undoubtedly see this as yet another baseless, politically inspired stunt and dismiss it just as they have his past complaints."

Seven Republican legislators will be the targets of ethics complaints to be filed tomorrow by two Democratic party leaders: State Senators Joseph Kyrillos, Bob Singer and Peter Inverso, and Assemblymen Kevin O'Toole, David Wolfe, Christopher Connors and Rick Merkt.

O'Toole, is running for State Senate in a contested GOP primary against former Bergen County Freeholder Todd Caliguire and Wayne attorney Victor Rabbat. Inverso is retiring, but comes from the politically competitive 14th district. Connors, in a safe GOP district, is running for the State Senate seat his father has held since 1981.

TOKEN INCREASE IN STATE AID ONLY EXACERBATES ONGOING PROPERTY TAX CRISIS

Senator Peter Inverso, (R-14), issued the following statement regarding the Corzine Administration’s release of new education aid figures.