Robert Kean

U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone will become more powerful with the victory of Henry Waxman in the race for House Energy and Commerce Chairman

Henry Waxman defeated John Dingell by 15 votes today to win the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the most powerful posts in Congress.  One of the big winners of the day was New Jersey’s Frank Pallone, who played a key role in Waxman’s successful insider effort.  Pallone, who chairs the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee, is likely to have expanded clout under Waxman.   Sources suggest that seven of eight New Jersey House Democrats backed Waxman; Rob Andrews was a whip in Dingell’s losing bid for re-election.

There is some irony to Andrews’ role in helping to re-elect an 82-year-old chairman who has been elected to Congress 27 times, considering his own challenge to 84-year-old incumbent Frank Lautenberg in the 2008 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.  Dingell was in Congress for 27 years before Lautenberg won his campaign.

James Sheeran, a Republican who served as Mayor of West Orange from 1958 to 1966, spent eight years in Brendan Byrne's cabinetJames Sheeran, the former state Insurance Commissioner who passed away this week at the age of 84, had the kind of life story voters love in a candidate.

He was the quarterback of a state championship football team, a World War II hero who, after his capture by the Nazis, escaped from a train headed to a POW camp and fought with the French underground before rejoining his unit. He went to law school, worked as an FBI agent, and in 1958, at age 35, was elected Mayor of West Orange.

Sheeran was the top vote getter in that race -- he received 9,179 votes, while the incumbent Mayor, Walter Quinn, had just 6,162 votes.

Henry Alexander Smith represented New Jersey in the U.S. Senate from 1944 to 1959.H. Alexander Smith was a late bloomer in New Jersey politics. Born in New York, he spent twelve years practicing law in Colorado Springs (his nephew, Peter Dominick, was the Senator from Colorado before losing his seat to Gary Hart in 1974) and worked at the U.S. Food Administration in Washington during World War II. He moved to New Jersey at age 39 to become Executive Secretary of Princeton University, and was elected New Jersey's Republican National Committeeman 23 years later.

After U.S. Senator Warren Barbour died in office at the end of 1943, Smith decided to run for the United States Senate. He was 64-years-old when he defeated Congressman Elmer Wene, a onetime chicken farmer from Cumberland County, by 25,725 votes -- a 50%-49% margin. He was re-elected in 1946 (by nearly nineteen percentage points against Camden Mayor George Brunner) and again in 1952, by a 56%-44% margin over Archibald Alexander.

When Gerald Ford decided to run for a full term as President in 1976, he picked Thomas Kean, the Assembly Minority Leader and the son of a former colleague (Robert W. Kean served with Ford in the House from 1949 to 1959( to run his New Jersey campaign operation. In his contest for the Republican nomination with Ronald Reagan, Ford won every New Jersey delegate. (Reagan opted not to run in the New Jersey primary, and a group of his supporters ran for Delegate under the "Former California Governor" banner. One New Jersey delegate, Thomas Bruinooge of Bergen County, wound up voting for Reagan.) In the general election, Ford won New Jersey over Jimmy Carter by a 65,035 vote margin.

Five years later, Ford returned the favor when he endorsed Kean, who was one of eight candidates for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. The former President traveled to New Jersey on April 2 to campaign for Kean and headline a fundraiser on his behalf. Former Presidents rarely become involved in contested primaries; Dwight Eisenhower declined to support his former Secretary of Labor, James Mitchell, until after he won the 1961 gubernatorial primary.

The last time a Kean won a statewide election on the first try? Never. Thomas Kean, the father of '06 U.S. Senate candidate Tom Kean, Jr., lost the 1977 GOP gubernatorial primary before winning election in 1981. Hamilton Kean, great-grandfather of Kean Jr., lost a 1924 Republican primary for U.S. Senate (to incumbent Walter Edge) and then won a U.S. Senate seat in 1928. Hamilton Kean's brother, John Kean, was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for Governor in 1892 and then won a U.S. Senate seat in 1899. Kean Jr.'s grandfather, Robert Kean, lost the 1958 U.S. Senate race to Democrat Harrison Williams and did not seek public office again.