Richard Merkt

Assemblyman Richard Merkt (R-Mendham)

The man in a jogging suit and sneakers turns onto Main Street and runs through Raritan, past the taverns and pizza parlors and churches and convenience stores.

He keeps a good pace as he heads out of the downtown business district, through a few blocks of residential housing and then across Route 206 and into Somerville. “I want to show people I’m hungry for this nomination,” says Assemblyman Richard Merkt (R-Mendham).  

There aren’t a lot of people out here who appear to be hanging on his every footfall, let alone his every word. With the exception of his campaign manager Chris Venis in tow and his daughter, occasionally – Merkt runs alone.

Assemblyman Richard Merkt (R-Mendham)

In the state Senate today, Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union) plans to introduce a bill that would suspend for 12 months a 2.5 percent tax on commercial development designed to create funds for affordable housing development. 

But the two Republican candidates officially in the race for governor both believe the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) shouldn’t be tweaked so such as simply scrapped. 

To that end, Assemblyman Richard Merkt (R-Mendham) intends to introduce his own bill on the floor that would do just that, even as the Legislature with Lesniak’s proposal will consider fine-tuning COAH, the State agency responsible for establishing and monitoring municipal affordable housing obligations in New Jersey. 

John Crowley, right, with Gov. Jon Corzine

Biotech Republican millionaire John Crowley of Princeton will not run for governor in 2009, according to his spokesman, Bill Spadea.

“What happened in the last few weeks is speculation that has gone beyond reality,” said Spadea. “It is certainly an honor for John to be considered a top-tier candidate but he does not intend to run at this time. Both John and myself will be focused on Building the New Majority (a grassroots organization Crowley and Spadea founded) and working to elect local and Assembly candidates in 2009.”

Crowley almost ran for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate earlier this year, even fielding a phone call from U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to get in the race, but he decided against it, citing the demands of his biotech business in Cranbury. 

Over the summer, Crowley and Spadea formed Building the New Majority and stepped up their outreach to party members, an effort that for Crowley included playing the host of a Mississippi boat ride at the Republican National Convention. 

Bergen County Clerk Kathe Donovan, who just won her fifth five year term as county clerk last month, does not rule out the possibility of becoming a candidate for Lieutenant Governor next year. 

But she’s not running for it.

“First of all you don’t run for it. The way I understand the law is people select you after the primary,” she said.

He’s not yet in officially, but he’s moving forward.

Franklin Mayor Brian D. Levine, a moderate Republican interested in pursuing a run for governor, this week inched closer to his goal.

“Yesterday, I filed a form with New Jersey ELEC to set up a campaign name and register and start to put an organization,” said Levine. “Monday I’m slated to give my first economic talk.” 

A CPA by trade and grassroots candidate who won election and re-election in Democratically-controlled Franklin, Levine says he’s used to going door-to-door and generating old fashioned face to face political support.

State Sen. Anthony Bucco (R-Morris)

BOONTON – State Sen. Anthony Bucco (R-Morris) said he has not yet committed to a gubernatorial candidate to challenge Gov. .Jon Corzine, but said he thinks whoever runs has a good chance of beating the incumbent Democrat – particularly if that person runs on an aggressive smaller government message. 

“I like Christie,” Bucco said of former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, who hasn’t yet entered the Republican Primary, but whom many establishment Republicans favor as the best choice to square off against Corzine. 

“But I haven’t committed to anyone,” added the veteran senator, who attended his son’s formal campaign kickoff for the Assembly in District 25.

Tony Bucco, Jr.

BOONTON - As muncipal attorney Tony Bucco, Jr., prepares to launch his District 25 Assembly bid from the Elks Lodge here in Boonton Town in northern Morris County this evening, the campaign allies of his chief rival fired off a release announcing their own candidate’s official start date next month.

Morris County Freeholder Douglas “Doug” Cabana will formally announce his candidacy on Tuesday, January 13, 2009, at the Zeris Inn in Mountain Lakes, according to Cabana campaign manager George Dredden.  

The pre-announcement announcement burnishes Cabana’s experience in the face of a competitor who has not held elected office.

Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll (R-Morris Twp.)

MORRIS TWP. – While his Democratic Party family forbearers probably found the nickname “Little Adlai” endearing, Michael Patrick Carroll hardly panned out as the ideological offspring of every  liberal’s favorite bumper sticker  - Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson - who was twice demolished by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Pro-life, pro-gun, pro-voucher,  and a proponent of scrapping Mount Laurel and Abbott who likens some of the Abbott Schools to “educational Taj Mahals,” veteran Assemblyman Carroll (R-Morris Twp.) remains one of the most outspoken conservative members of the New Jersey Legislature.

“I don’t generally do as well in my hometown of Morris Township as I do in western Morris County – places like Roxbury and Randolph,” Carroll said. “We’re like everywhere else in New Jersey – the farther east you go, the bluer it gets.”

Morris County Freeholder Doug Cabana announced today that he has selected two veteran operatives to help run his District 25 Assembly campaign, both of whom worked earlier this year on state Sen. Joseph Pennacchio’s (R-Morris) unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign.

George Dredden of Parsippany will serve as Cabana’s campaign manager, and Dan Gallic will serve as political consultant. 

Dredden is the former executive director of the National Black Republican Council of NJ, and former vice-president of the Parsippany-Troy Hills Republican Club. 

Morris County Freeholder Doug Cabana

BOONTON - District 25 Assembly candidate Doug Cabana says the holidays shouldn’t be about politics so much as spending time with family.

But when Cabana last month sat down to Thanksgiving dinner across a table of family fellowship, the Morris County freeholder couldn’t avoid looking into the eyes of his chief political rival in District 25: Tony Bucco, Jr., husband to his only sister, Amy.

“I spent Thanksgiving at their house,” Cabana said.

"Doug and his parents have come to our house every year for Thanksgiving," said Bucco. "The way I see it, family is family and politics is politics. So when this Thanksgiving rolled around, it was no different. We had family and football."

There will likely be a few more weeks of these encounters, of tearing into gifts and food.

Then the campaigns of Bucco and Cabana will tear into each other, as most political insiders see the two men as chief combatants in the fight to succeed retiring Assemblyman Richard Merkt (R-Mendham).