Richard Dennison

With about five weeks to go before the general election, it’s risky to write off any political campaign as a lost cause. But several underdog candidates who once seemed to have a slight chance at running competitive races do not seem to have picked up steam or support from their parties.

State Senate candidates Robert Colletti, Richard Dennison, Gina Genovese and John Villapiano have all run spirited campaigns. And while none has a good shot at winning on November 6th, all four insist that their campaigns are very much alive.

Meanwhile, Seema Singh’s State Senate campaign isn’t necessarily dead, though it is on life support.

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.

In district seven, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by almost two to one, Democratic state Senate candidate Rich Dennison keeps coming back to a a single theme when attacking incumbent Diane Allen: she’s a Republican.

Dennison even kicked off his campaign by trying to get Allen to sign a pledge declaring her independence from Bush, and last week made a tempting offer to reporters at a press conference, saying he’d give a million dollars to anyone who could find the word “Republican” on an Allen campaign flyer that he help up.

Dennison’s strategy is vaguely reminiscent of a recent U.S. Senate race in another densely populated blue state: Rhode Island, where in 2006 Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse beat independent-minded incumbent Republican Sen. Lincoln Chaffee in an election widely viewed as a referendum on President Bush and the Republican Party. Despite breaking from his party on many issues, the reason most often cited for Chafee’s loss was the “R” next to his name.

Emerging as the Paul Stuart Aronsohn of 2007 is Richard Dennison, the Democratic candidate for State Senate in the seventh district. The 29-year-old undertaker/lawyer refuses to talk about state issues and appears to be mounting a campaign to oust George W. Bush, not Diane Allen. He has used two poorly attended press conferences to tie the three-term GOP Senator to the unpopular President, but is still unable to name a single vote Allen has cast during her twelve years in the Legislature where he would have voted differently.

Democrat Richard Dennison launched his campaign to unseat State Sen. Diane Allen today by linking her to George W. Bush, but he was unable to identify a single time he would have voted differently than her in Trenton.

The 29-year-old lawyer/undertaker, who interned in the Clinton White House, called on Allen to "declare independence from George W. Bush and his politics of special interest, so that we may best serve our true constituents, the people of the 7th district."

Burlington County Democrats have picked Clinton speechwriter-turned-undertaker Richard Dennison to run for State Senate against Diane Allen in the seventh district.  The 29-year-old Marlton native (he'll turn thirty -- the minimum age for a Senate seat -- in July) is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Georgetown Law School.  He worked for Bill Clinton before joining his family-owned funeral home in Florence.  Dennison will run with Democratic Assemblymen Herbert Conaway and Jack Conners