Phil Haines

Rudder-Less Campaign Reaches New Level of Hypocrisy

As 8th District state Senate candidate Assemblyman Fran Bodine and Assembly candidates Tracy Riley and Chris Fifis today called on U.S. Rep. Jim Saxton to protest his support for President George W. Bush’s veto of SCHIP legislation, Burlington County GOP spokesman Chris Russell reissued a press release on behalf of his 8th District Legislative team.

Russell wanted it known that his Senate candidate Phil Haines, and Assembly running mates Dawn Marie Addiego and Scott Rudder, had weeks ago called on Bush to reauthorize the children’s healthcare program.
Addiego rode point on the issue.

Martha Bark may not be running for re-election, but the eighth district Democrats don’t want her to go away. At least not as a campaign issue.

In a press release today, Democratic Assemblyman and State Senate candidate Fran Bodine and his Assembly running mates Chris Fifis and Tracy Riley said that their Republican opponents should either condemn Bark or embrace her. To make the point, Burlington County Democratic Chairman Rick Perr used language reminiscent of President Bush.

The GOP candidates in District 8 were all over Assemblyman Francis Bodine and his running mates on the heels of a Courier-Post news piece yesterday they said depicted Bodine as the ultimate insider and hardly reformer material.

Democrats responded with what they said was damning news about GOP Assembly candidates Dawn Addiego and Scott Rudder - and trotted out the "boss" tag in connection with the Republicans, noting that GOP strongman Glenn Paulsen had been observed "huddling" with Addiego and Rudder at party HQ in Mount Holly.

District 8 Assemblyman Fran Bodine and his running mates, Tracy Riley and Chris Fifis, today threw punches in the direction of outgoing Republican State Sen. Martha Bark, who is under state investigation in connection with money she received from the Burlington County Bridge Commission for part-time work.

In response, County GOP spokesman Chris Russell said the Democrats' press conference amounted to little more than damage control for Bodine.

Each started out in the party of the other, and now 8th district State Senate candidates Fran Bodine and Phil Haines stare from their adopted battlements at the remnants of the parties they left behind - or that left them - or that really no longer exist.

The Burlington County Clerk, Haines, shakes his head in cheery bewilderment as he considers Bodine’s Benedict Arnold moment last spring, when the 14-year Assemblyman stood with U.S. Rep. Bob Andrews to announce his defection from the GOP ranks to run for state Senate as a Democrat.

Bodine likewise won’t accept an invitation to reflect on the Burlington County politicians’ mutual pasts without reminding the listener of Haines’ political beginnings. "I really got to know Phil back when he was a Democrat," muses Bodine.

One of the best candidate recruitments for Assembly Republicans was in the seventh district, where former Philadelphia Flyers All-Star Brian Propp is challenging incumbents Herbert Conaway and Jack Conners. The Burlington-Camden district leans strongly to the Democratic side, but another celebrity candidate, former TV news anchorwoman Diane Allen, has won four elections there as a Republican by relatively comfortable margins. Republicans believed that Allen's coattails -- a spring GOP poll had her re-elect at a solid 55% -- could help Propp win.

But Propp may be the victim of limited GOP resources. One year after Democrats won the Burlington County Surrogate race, the Republicans are on the defensive: their main goal is hold their two Freeholder seats and re-elect Sheriff Jean Stanfield. And a party switch has made the normally Republican eighth district a little more competitive -- Assemblyman Francis Bodine, a Republican elected official for the last thirty years, switched parties earlier this year (after the GOP dumped him) and is now running for an open State Senate seat against County Clerk Phil Haines. That has also put the two open Assembly seats in play.

Eighth district Republicans got Constitutionally banged up when they tried to confront the Democrats over the issue of Tracy Riley’s husband representing a man charged in a terror plot. But now the GOP is crowing over Riley’s departure from her job as a clerk and office manager at her husband's law firm to focus on her campaign for the Assembly.

Riley announced today that she is leaving the firm, and Republicans say it’s because she can’t bear the association.

Is Shirley Turner really in trouble, or did someone just spin Joe Donohue? In a review of competitive State Senate races for the upcoming mid-term elections, The Star-Ledger listed the 15th district as one of the in-play seats that the GOP needs to win to take control of the Senate.

Republican newcomer Robert Martin is self-financing his race against Turner, and Senate Minority Leader Leonard Lance has become infatuated with his candidacy. Martin has done some early mail and cable TV ads, and GOP insiders say he plans to spend a few hundred thousand dollars.

Democrats are spending money in four districts where they have a reasonable shot at picking up seats: against GOP incumbents Nicholas Asselta in district 1, Sonny McCullough in district 2, and Gerald Cardinale in the 39th; for open seats in District 8 (where Republican-turned-Democrat Assemblyman Francis Bodine faces Burlington County Clerk Philip Haines for the seat being vacated by retiring Senator Martha Bark.