Richard Zimmer

Fair Haven Mayor Michael Halfacre is expected to enter the race for the Republican nomination for Congress in New Jersey's 12th district.  He wants toun against six-term U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (D-Hopewell). 

Holt, 60, was elected to Congress in 1998 in a 51%-48% upset victory that took advantage of incumbent Michael Pappas' weaknesses.  He defied pundits two years later by holding the seat against former U.S. Rep. Dick Zimmer, winning by just 651 votes.  Boosted by some adjustments to his district after the 2000 Census, Holt won 61% against former N.J. Secretary of State DeForest "Buster" Soaries in 2002, 59% against GOP activist Bill Spadea in 2004, 65% against former Helmetta Councilman Joseph Sinagra in 2006, and 62% against Holmdel Deputy Mayor Alan Bateman in 2008.

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U.S. Rep. Jim Saxton (R-Mt. Holly) will retire tomorrow after 24 years in the U.S. House of Representatives.

When Jim Saxton and Mike Ferguson leave Congress tomorrow, New Jersey will have nineteen living former Congressmen.  The oldest is Peter H.B. Frelinghuysen, the 93-year-old father of U.S. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen.  He first won an open seat in 1952 and served until his retirement in 1974.  The youngest is the soon-to-be-unemployed Michael Pappas, 48, a Republican who won an open seat in 1996 and lost his bid for re-election to a second term two years later.  Pappas works for the Small Business Administration and will likely lose his job when the new administration takes office this month.

Quinnipiac University will release results of a new poll tomorrow with head to head numbers in the Lautenberg-Zimmer U.S. Senate race, and approval ratings for Gov. Jon Corzine.

Tom Blakely (1961-2008)Political consultant Tom Blakely’s sudden death on Saturday left his New Jersey friends and colleagues shocked at the passing of a man who had realized success and who, at only 46-years-old, had the potential to achieve so much more.

“The best was ahead of him,” said state Sen. Kevin O’Toole, a friend of Blakely and a cousin by marriage.

Blakely’s rise to prominence in the behind-the-scenes political world began with the 1990 12th district Congressional campaign of Dick Zimmer, after strategist Larry Weitzner, who was the then Zimmer’s campaign manager, advised Zimmer to take him on as a field worker. Zimmer was so happy with his performance that he hired him as his district director after he was elected, and he eventually managed his unsuccessful Senate campaign against Robert Toricelli in 1996.

“He was utterly reliable, very pragmatic, and it set my mind at ease asking him to do something because I knew he would do it,” said Zimmer.

Congressman Christopher Smith will endorse Jack Kelly for Congress in the neighboring third district GOP primary, a move that insiders say is bugging his old friend, Jim Saxton.   Smith and Saxton have been allies since 1980, when Smith ousted a 13-term Democratic incumbent in a district that included Saxton’s hometown.  Saxton, an Assemblyman at the time, went to the State Senate in 1981, and after redistricting and the death of longtime GOP Congressman Edwin Forsythe, to Congress in 1984.  Saxton is backing Christopher Myers, the Deputy Mayor of Medford and a Vice President at Lockheed Martin.

Confessions of a Republican Operative: How to Rig an Election, written by Allen Raymond, to be released by Simon and Schuster on January 8, will take some shots at New Jersey political figures.  Raymond started out in politics as the campaign manager for Bill Martini's successful 1994 bid to unseat Democratic Congressman Herbert Klein, and then served as Martini's Chief of Staff.  (Martini is now a Federal Judge; Sharpe James' trial has been assigned to him.)  Raymond was also, briefly, the Executive Director of the New Jersey Republican State Committee, and worked for Dick Zimmer's campaign for Congress.

When then-Essex County Executive James Treffinger was indicted in 2002, there were allegations that his U.S. Senate campaign made dirty tricks calls on Super Bowl Sunday seeking support for Diane Allen, his primary rival.  Raymond was the consultant referred to in the Treffinger indictment, sources told PolitickerNJ.com.

David Plouffe, who is expected to serve as Barack Obama's campaign manager if he seeks the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, is well known to New Jerseyans as Bob Torricelli's campaign manager in his 1996 U.S. Senate race against Richard Zimmer. He later served as Deputy Chief of Staff to House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, and as Executive Director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

If November '08 turns out to be a contest between Obama and Rudy Giuliani, one small irony will be that both campaign managers will have worked against Zimmer in the 1996 Senate race. Michael DuHaime, who is running Giuliani's race, was a recent Rutgers graduate when he volunteered on the campaign of his father, Passaic County Freeholder Richard DuHaime, a conservative who challenged Zimmer in the Republican U.S. Senate primary.

Christopher Smith and Rush Holt are safe bets for re-election in 2006, and these two Congressmen -- who were initially given little chance to win -- overcame tough campaigns to win a second term. Thanks to some hard work and favorable treatment during redistricting, Smith and Holt have become House veterans.

It was assumed that Smith was simply a fluke. He was a neophyte who won a seat in Congress at age 27 against an incumbent under indictment. He defeated 13-term incumbent Frank Thompson, Jr., the Chairman of the House Administration Committee, by a 57%-41% margin and with just $79,000.

Smith's opponent was the best Democrats had to offer: Joseph Merlino, a former State Senate President and one of Trenton's most prolific vote getters. Richard Zimmer, the former Congressman, was the clear favorite to win back his old House seat against Holt, who had ousted Zimmer's Republican successor in 1998.

Both Smith and Holt won upset victories against incumbents weakened by national political scandals. For Smith, it was the Abscam scandal, when Thomspon was videotaped accepting bribes from FBI agents posing as Arab sheiks in a sting operation; for Holt, it was the impeachment of President Bill Clinton and the brief rendition of Twinkle, Twinkle Kenneth Starr sung on the House floor by Michael Pappas that ended the Republican's political career after just a single term.

Smith and Holt were political newcomers who lost congressional races before winning the second time around. Smith worked for a family sporting goods business and won 37% against Thompson in 1978. Holt directed the Plasma Lab at Princeton University and lost the Democratic primary for an open seat in 1996.

The districts of both Congressmen favored their opponents. In 1980, Smith was the only Republican to unseat a Democratic incumbent in a congressional district where Jimmy Carter outpolled Ronald Reagan. Two years later, prior to the existence of the bi-partisan Congressional Apportionment Commission, the Democratic legislature approved a redistricting plan that made the district even less favorable to Smith. Merlino was said to have drawn the map himself. The 12th district was heavily Republican, and Zimmer won it with ease three times.

Smith and Holt were both targeted for defeat by the party in control of Congress seeking to protect their majority. Both challengers had higher name identification than the incumbents. Merlino had sought the Democratic nomination for Governor in 1981, and Zimmer ran for the U.S. Senate in 1996.

Both Smith and Holt had ideologies that were not perfectly in sync with their districts. Smith was a cultural conservative in a liberal district; Holt was a liberal representing an fiscally conservative region of the state that provided pluralities to moderate Republican statewide candidates.

From their first day in Congress, Smith and Holt knew they had a tenuous hold on their congressional seats. They both worked hard, seemingly non-stop, in an effort to appeal to their constituents.

As congressional candidates, Merlino and Zimmer proved disappointing. Smith portrayed Merlino as an old-time, cigar-smoking political boss, an image that was enhanced when Merlino called Smith "Kid" in the presence of reporters. Holt painted Zimmer as a Newt Gingrich Republican. Smith and Holt exceeded the expectations of the political experts.

The Asbury Park Press reported today that FBI agents have raided the Western Monmouth Utility Authority and the home of WMUA Executive Director Frank Abate. Abate, a former Marlboro Councilman, won 32% of the vote as the Democratic candidate for Congress against Richard Zimmer in 1992. He was indicted in 1995 on charges that he tampered with election petitions, but the charges were eventually dropped.

One of the most exclusive clubs in New Jersey politics belongs to the group of three men who came within 1,000 votes of winning a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives: Norman Roth, Lindsay Rudd and Gene Boyle.

The closest House race this century was in 1956, when Roth, a Jersey City Republican, lost to three-term Democratic Congressman Alfred Sieminski (the last Democratic Congressman from New Jersey who went to Princeton) by a razor-thin 57 votes, a 44.97%-44.92% margin. (Two years later, Sieminski lost the Democratic primary to Cornelius Gallagher.)

In 1936, four-term GOP Congressman Fred Hartley, who became nationally prominent as the co-sponsor of the Taft-Hartley Act, survived a challenge from Democrat Rudd by just 665 votes -- 50.2%-49.6%. Hartley survived another close race in 1946 from a young Newark attorney and World War II veteran named Peter Rodino; he retired in 1948 and Rodino began a congressional career that lasted forty years.

Boyle, a 48-year-old former Passaic Valley Sewerage Commissioner who owned a popular restaurant in Clifton, came within 960 votes of winning a 1969 Special Election for Congress in the 8th district (the incumbent, Democrat Charles Joelson, resigned to become a Superior Court Judge). The winner was Democrat Robert Roe, the state Commissioner of Conservation and Economic Development in the cabinet of Governor Richard Hughes who had served as a Passaic County Freeholder and as Mayor of Wayne. The Democrat had been the heavy favorite and Boyle's near-win was much a result of GOP gubernatorial candidate William Cahill's coattails. Roe went on to serve 23 years in Congress without every having another tough race and chaired the powerful House Transportation and Public Works Committee. Boyle, who ran for office only once, died in 1991 at the age of 70.

(Technically, Richard Zimmer could be considered the fourth member of the club, since he lost a 2000 House race to incumbent Rush Holt by 651 votes. But Zimmer, who held the seat from 1991 to 1997, had already served in Congress.)