Richard Hughes

Robert Meyner appointed eight men to the New Jersey Supreme Court during his two terms as Governor, many of them relatively young.  As a result, Richard Hughes, who followed Meyner, made no Supreme Court appointments during his eight years in office.  By the time William Cahill was elected Governor in 1969, the court began to turnover as several Justices reached the mandatory retirement age of seventy.  During his four years as Governor, Cahill made six appointments to five seats on the top court.

In early 1971, Cahill replaced retiring Justice Vincent Haneman with Worrall Mountain, a 62-year-old Appellate Court Judge from Morris County.  Both were Republicans.

Two other Justices, John Francis and Thomas Schettino, both Democrats, retired in September 1972.  At the time, the front runners for the two Supreme Court seats were Attorney General George Kugler and Robert Clifford, the Commissioner of Institutions and Agencies (now Human Services).  But Kugler became involved in one of several scandals that rocked the Cahill administraton: he was accused of helping to cover up charges that Secretary of State Paul Sherwin delivered a highway contract in exchange for a $10,000 contribution to the Republican State Committee.  While Sherwin went to prison, Kugler was cleared of any wrong doing by the State Commission of Investigation - although his hopes of going to the Supreme Court ended rather quickly.

There was considerable speculation at in 1972 that one of the Democratic candidates for Associate Justice was a young, politically-connected Superior Court Judge named Brendan Byrne.  Byrne received some attention when an organized crime wiretap called him the "judge that couldn't be bought," but Byrne was well known in the statehouse as Meyner's former Executive Secretary (now Chief of Staff), and as a former President of the Board of Public Utilities and Essex County Prosecutor.

It wasn't until six months later that Cahill, facing a hotly contested Republican primary against U.S. Rep. Charles Sandman, announced his picks for the two open Supreme Court seats: Republican Pierre Garven, his 47-year-old Chief Counsel, and Democrat Mark Sullivan, 62, an Appellate Court Judge.    Both came from prominent Hudson County political families: Garven's father was Mayor of Bayonne from 1906 to 1910 and again from 1915 to 1919; Sullivan's father was a Judge who once ran for Mayor of Jersey City, and his father-in-law was a five-term Democratic Congressman from Jersey City.

Two weeks after Cahill named Garven and Sullivan, Chief Justice Joseph Weintraub announced that he would retire at the end of the year - a move that would later be moved up to September 1.  The 65-year-old Weintraub decided sixteen years was enough and that he wanted to travel.   Read More >

Death and retirements gave Democratic Governor Robert Meyner the opportunity to make eight New Jersey Supreme Court appointments during his eight years as Governor - the most for any Governor under the current State Constitution, including Alfred Driscoll, who made seven appointments in December 1947.

But during the eight years that Meyner's successor, Democrat Richard Hughes, was Governor, he made no Supreme Court appointments.  But Hughes would himself serve as Chief Justice for nearly six years after leaving office.

Not including sitting Judges being renominated, Republicans William Cahill and Christine Todd Whitman nominated five Justices; Brendan Byrne picked four; James E. McGreevey and Jon Corzine named three; and Thomas Kean selected just two new Justices during his eight years as Governor.  James Florio made no Supreme Court appointments during his four years as Governor.

Read More >

When 68-year-old Arthur Vanderbilt, the Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court and founding father of the state's judicial system, died of a heart attack on June 16, 1957, it put Governor Robert Meyner in the position of filling three Supreme Court seats while in the midst of his own re-election bid.

Meyner's decision for Vanderbilt's successor was easy: he picked Joseph Weintraub, his 48-year-old former Chief Counsel.  Weintraub had been an Associate Justice since November 1956 when Meyner picked him to replace William Brennan, who had been named to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Dwight Eisenhower.

The Governor then needed an Associate Justice to replace Weintraub, and another to replace Dayton Oliphant, who would reach the mandatory retirement age of seventy in October 1957.  Oliphant, whose uncle, William Dayton, had been a U.S. Senator and the 1856 Republican nominee for Vice President, was a former Assembly Majority Leader and Mercer County Prosecutor; he spent thirty years on the bench.

In order to maintain a partisan balance of the top court, Meyner chose to appoint a Democrat to replace Weintraub and a Republican for Oliphant's seat.  Two of Meyner's top choices were Superior Court Judges from Essex County, John Francis, a Democrat and Alfred Clapp, a Republican.  Francis had won 46% as the Democratic candidate for Congress in 1944, and Clapp, 53, was a two-term Republican State Senator who resigned to become a Judge after losing the 1953 GOP gubernatorial primary.

The problem for Meyner was that there were already three Supreme Court Justice from Essex - Weintraub, William Wachenfeld, and Nathan Jacobs - and he didn't want to go to more than four, especially five months away from Election Day.

Read More >

One of the classic stories of the New Jersey Legislature in 1968 were allegations that a Newark Assemblyman wanted to cancel a hearing on organized crime under pressure from a "lobbyist" representing Geraldo (Jerry) Catena, one of the state's most powerful mob bosses.

Senate Law and Public Safety Committee Chairman Joseph Woodcock held a news conference in December 1968 to say that his aide was told by Assembly Law and Public Safety Committee Chairman Richard Fiore that he was being pressured by Catena to stop legislative proposals to create the State Commission of Investigation, and to legalize wiretapping, and to permit certain witnesses to receive immunity from prosecution.

Claire Curran Johnson, a former New York Mirror crime reporter who worked for Woodcock, told investigators for the state Attorney General's office that Fiore, a 36-year-old substitute teacher and Recreation Director for the Newark Board of Education, claimed he wanted to head the Assembly panel "to stop these kind of things." "There is a lot of pressure. You just don't know how much pressure. Jerry is unhappy about it," Curran quoted Fiore as telling her.

Read More >

Only twice have incumbent statewide officeholders lost primary elections.  They were both Republicans: in 1973, U.S. Rep. Charles Sandman defeated Governor William Cahill by a 58%-41% margin; and in 1978, when four-term U.S. Senator Clifford Case lost to Jeffrey Bell, a 35-year-old former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, by a 51%-49% margin.

In 1977, Governor Brendan Byrne had ten opponents in the Democratic primary, including two Congressmen, a State Senator, and his own Commissioner of Labor.  Byrne won with 30% of the vote; U.S. Rep. Robert Roe came in second with 23%.

The most high profile primary against an incumbent came in 2008, when 84-year-old U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg faced a major challenge from U.S. Rep. Robert Andrews.  Lautenberg won 59% of the vote in the Democratic primary, with 35% for Andrews and 6% for Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello. 

Lautenberg has faced two minor challenges as an incumbent.  He won 81% against Bill Campbell and Lynne Speed in 1994 and 80% against Elnardo Webster (the father of a powerful Democratic lawyer) and Harold Young in 1988.

Read More >

New Jersey state government, closed today to honor the life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., has failed to honor the lives of two African American trailblazers despite legislation that was approved almost two years ago.

P.L.2007, c.64., signed into law by Governor Jon Corzine on April 4, 2007, directed the Secretary of State to commission plaques commemorating Hutchins Inge, M.D. and Walter Gilbert Alexander, who were the first African Americans to win election to the New Jersey Senate and General Assembly, respectively.  The legislation, which had primary sponsorship from both parties and in both houses, included an appropriation to play for the plaques.

Alexander, a Republican who was elected to the State Assembly in 1920. The son of former slaves, Alexander was born in Virginia in 1880; he went to college at age sixteen and then to medical school. Alexander moved to Orange to build a medical practice and became involved in local politics. He ran unsuccessfully for the State Assembly in 1912 on the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party ticket with Theodore Roosevelt, and won in 1920. He went on to serve two terms in the Legislature and then spent many years on the state Health Commission. He died in 1953.

Inge, a 64-year-old Newark physician, became the first African American to serve in the New Jersey State Senate. Inge was elected in 1965, after the U.S. Supreme Court's one-man, one-vote decision increased the size of the Essex County Senate delegation from one seat to four.

Read More >

If Chris Christie wins the 2009 gubernatorial election, he’ll become the first former U.S. Attorney from New Jersey to win public office since Garret Wall was elected to the United States Senate in 1835.  Wall was an Assemblyman from Middletown when he was named federal prosecutor in 1828; he was elected Governor the following year but declined to serve.

Thorn Lord, who was U.S. Attorney from 1943 to 1945, was the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in 1960.  He lost to the Republican incumbent, Clifford Case.  (For extreme political junkies, Lord’s law partner was Richard Hughes, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney who was elected Governor in 1961.)

Robert DelTufo, the U.S. Attorney from 1977 to 1980, sought the Democratic nomination for Governor in 1985.  He finished fifth in a field of six primary candidates with 4% of the vote.

Read More >

Leonard Lance offered a lesson in New Jersey political history during his farewell address to the State Senate on Monday - but unfortunately got one of his facts wrong. Lance spoke of his first memory of the Senate, going to Trenton in 1956, at age three and a half, when his father was the Senator from Hunterdon County and watching some Senators like Wayne Dumont (the Senate President), Frank "Hap" Farley and Mark Anton. While Lance's knowledge is always impressive, he got one thing wrong: Anton wasn't in the Senate in 1956; he lost re-election two months earlier.

Anton, the Chairman of the Suburban Propane Gas Corporation, was a half-term Republican from Essex County who was elected in a 1953 special election after Alfred Clapp, who had mounted an unsuccessful campaign for the GOP gubernatorial election, resigned to become a Superior Court Judge. When Anton sought a full term in 1955, he found himself in a feud with former U.S. Attorney William Tompkins, a former Assemblyman from Essex County who was at the time serving as the Assistant U.S. Attorney General. Anton and Tompkins were both interested in seeking the Republican nomination for Governor in 1957.

Tompkins, who considered challenging Anton himself (he ran for the Senate ten years later but lost to a Democratic slate headed by John Giblin), instead recruited Assembly Majority Leader William Barnes to run. Barnes attacked Anton for his support of night harness racing and his membership on a citizens committee formed to end a high profile strike on the New York pier, but lost the primary to Anton, 53%-47%.

Unable to unite the Essex GOP in the general election, Anton lost to Democrat Donal Fox. Fox, a former Assistant Essex County Prosecutor who had managed the nearly successful U.S. Senate campaign of Charles Howell in 1954 (Howell, a Democratic Congressman from Mercer County, lost the open Senate seat to Republican Clifford Case by an excruciatingly close 48.7%-48.5% margin), became the first Democrat to win the Essex Senate seat since 1908. He took office on the day Lance described as his first memory of visiting the Senate chamber.

Read More >

Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes is resting comfortably after suffering a heart attack on Sunday afternoon.  The 52-year-old Democrat, had surgery to repair a blocked artery.  In late 2004, underwent brain surgery to treat trigeminal neuralgia, a disorder that causes intense facial pain.

Read More >

Superior Court Judge Harold Hollenbeck will reach the mandatory retirement age of seventy on December 29, possibly ending a career in public service that began with his election to the East Rutherford Borough Council in 1966. But some Republican insiders say that Hollenbeck could be the GOP’s strongest candidate to challenge Bergen County Executive Dennis McNerney in 2010.

Hollenbeck was elected to the State Assembly in 1967, at the age of 29, as part of a Republican sweep of Bergen County in the second mid-term election of Democratic Gov. Richard Hughes. After two terms in the Assembly, he won a State Senate seat in 1971.

Read More >