Robert Meyner

The Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Yankees have met in a Word Series only once before: in 1950.  The Governor of New Jersey was Alfred Driscoll, a Republican from Haddonfield and a serious Phillies fan. There were no statewide elections that year, and thirteen Congressmen running for re-election won; the GOP held an open seat in the old seventh district (Bergen County in those days) with 70% of the vote.

The Phillies have only been in the World Series during one New Jersey gubernatorial election year: 1993, when Republican Christine Todd Whitman ousted incumbent James Florio, a Camden County Democrat. 

New Jersey has elected Governors eleven times in a year when the Yankees won the World Series.  Democrats have won in seven of those years, and the Republicans in four.  In those years, when the Democrats win the governorship, the Yankees win the World Series 57% of the time; when the GOP elects a Governor, the Yankees are world champions 75% of the time.

Since 1961, the New York Times has endorsed the winner in nine of the last twelve campaigns for Governor of New Jersey.   They have also backed incumbents in each of the last six races where a sitting Governor sought re-election, including their support of Gov. Jon Corzine, and have backed Democrats nine times and Republicans three times.

In races where incumbents were seeking second terms, the New York Times endorsed Christine Todd Whitman in 1997, James Florio in 1993, Thomas Kean in 1985, Brendan Byrne in 1977,and Richard Hughes in 1965.  Florio, Byrne and Hughes were Democrats; Whitman and Kean were Republicans.  Only Florio was defeated; he lost to Whitman.

In contests for open seats, the New York Times backed Corzine in 2005, James E. McGreevey in 2001, Florio in 1989, Kean in 1981, Byrne in 1973, Robert Meyner in 1969, and James Mitchell in 1961.  Kean and Mitchell were Republicans.  Meyner, a former  two-term Governor seeking a comeback, and Mitchell, who was U.S. Secretary of Labor in the Eisenhower administration, were defeated.  Meyner lost to William Cahill and Hughes defeated Mitchell.

When he leaves office in January, Joseph Roberts will become one of eleven living for Speakers of the New Jersey General Assembly. 

Living Speakers:

Robert Meyner, campaigning for Governor in 1953, made seven original appointments to the New Jersey Supreme Court during his eight years in office.

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.

Left to right: Chief Justices Arthur Vanderbilt and Joseph Weintraub, Gov. Robert Meyner, and Richard Hughes, who was Governor from 1962 to 1970, and Chief Justice from 1973 to 1979.

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.

Lafayette College Special Collections & College Archives Photo

Robert Meyner was elected Governor in 1953, two years after he lost his State Senate seat to Wayne Dumont.

Of the seven Democrats and Republicans running for Governor, only two have never lost an election: Democrat Jon Corzine won a race for U.S. Senate in 2000 and was elected Governor in 2005; and Republican Brian Levine was elected to the Franklin Township Council in 1997 and 2001, and Mayor in 2003 and 2007.

On the Republican side, Christopher Christie was elected to the Morris County Board of Freeholders in 1994, and lost GOP primaries for State Assembly in 1995 and for Freeholder in 1997.  Steven Lonegan was elected Mayor of Bogota in 1995, 1999 and 2003, but lost races for State Senator (in 1997 to incumbent Byron Baer) Congress (in 1998 to incumbent Steve Rothman), Bergen County Executive (2002 convention) and Governor (2005 primary).  Rick Merkt lost a 1995 primary for State Assembly (he was Christie's running mate) before winning the first of six terms in 1997.  Jim Murray lost a 2006 primary for Morris County Freeholder and then won in 2007.

Corzine's Democratic primary opponent, Carl Bergmanson, was elected three times to the Glen Ridge Council before losing a 1999 bid for Mayor.  He was elected Mayor four years later.

Of New Jersey's ten elected Governors under the current State Constitution, six had lost previous elections: James E. McGreevey ran unsuccessfully for Governor in 1997; Christine Todd Whitman lost a 1990 bid for U.S. Senate; Jim Florio lost a race for Congress in 1972, a gubernatorial primary in 1977, and a race for Governor in 1981; Thomas Kean, Sr. lost Republican primaries for Congress (1974) and Governor (1977); Richard Hughes lost a race for Congress in 1938; and Robert Meyner was defeated in a re-election bid for State Senator two years before he was elected Governor in 1953. 

Edward J. Patten served as Mayor of Perth Amboy, Middlesex County Clerk, N.J. Secretary of State, and from 1962 to 1981, as a U.S. Congressman.

When New Jersey picked up a fifteenth congressional seat after the 1960 census, the new district included nearly all of Middlesex County.  That was at the insistence of David Wilentz, a former state Attorney General who dominated Middlesex County politics as the Democratic boss from the 1930's into the 1970's.  At the time, congressional districts were drawn by the Legislature and approved by the Governor.  The Senate was under Republican control, 11-10, but Democrats controlled the Assembly and the Governor was a Democrat, Richard Hughes.

One rare rebel who dared to challenge Wilentz's wishes was George Otlowski, a Middlesex County Freeholder from Perth Amboy - the center of the Wilentz power base. 

Otlowski, who had been a Middlesex County Freeholder for eight years, wanted to go to Congress - but Wilentz had another candidate: Edward Patten, a former Perth Amboy Mayor and Middlesex County Clerk who had managed Robert Meyner's campaign for Governor and served as New Jersey Secretary of State from 1954 to 1962.  Patten won the primary by a 56%-44% margin and beat Republican Bernard Rodgers, the Mayor of Dunellen, after pledging to support President John F. Kennedy "100%."

Gloria Bontempo, the widow of former Democratic State Chairman Salvatore Bontempo, passed away on Sunday.  She was 82.  Her son, Paul Bontempo, is a Trenton lobbyist. 

Former State Sen. Ned J. Parsekian (1921-2008)Ned J. Parsekian, who passed away on Monday, only served two years as a state Senator.

But those who remember Parsekian recall an independent, vocal liberal whose political career was shortened by the circumstances of the times, and whose life-long designs on the governor’s office may have been thwarted by his outspoken stands against politics as usual.

Elected to the Senate in 1965, Parsekian lost just two years later, when an anti-Democratic wave related to voter disenchantment over their creation of a state sales tax and a general feeling of dismay over the Vietnam War knocked many Democrats out of office.

Ned J. Parsekian, a former State Senator from Bergen County, sought the Democratic nomination for Governor in 1969Former State Sen. Ned J. Parsekian, a Bergen County Democrat who ran for Governor in 1969, died on Monday in Sarasota, Florida, according to his law partner, Melvin Solomon. He was 86.

A graduate of New York University and Columbia Law School, and a World War II veteran, Parsekian began his political career serving in the administration of Gov. Robert Meyner. He was Deputy Attorney General, Director of the state Division of Workmen's Compensation, and Director of the Division of Motor Vehicles. He held the post on an acting basis for three years before the Republican-controlled Senate confirmed his nomination.

Parsekian was elected to the State Senate in 1965 and lost re-election in 1967. He briefly considered entering the race to challenge GOP U.S. Sen. Clifford Case in 1966, but declined.  Democrats later decided to back Warren Wilentz, the Middlesex County Prosecutor, for the post.