Robert Roe

Gov. Richard J. Hughes won 91% of the vote in the 1965 Democratic gubernatorial primary, when he sought re-election to a second term.

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.

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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.

New Jersey has seventeen living former Congressmen -- that number should go to nineteen next year with the retirements of Jim Saxton and Michael Ferguson.  The oldest is Peter Frelinghuysen, the 92-year-old father of Congressman Rodney Frelinghuysen, who won an open seat in 1952 and served until his retirement in 1973. He lives in Morristown.  The youngest is Michael Pappas, a Somerset County Freeholder who won a seat in 1996 and lost it in 1998; he is 47.

*Cornelius Gallagher, 85, who served as a Hudson County Freeholder from 1953 to 1956 and as a Congressman from 1959 until his defeat in the 1972 Democratic primary. He lives in Hunterdon County.

*Robert Roe, 84, who served as Mayor of Wayne, Passaic County Freeholder and state Commissioner of Convervation and Economic Development before winning a House seat in a 1969 Special Election. He served until his retirement in 1992 and now runs a lobbying firm that specializes in transportation issues.

The Essex County District 5 Freeholder seat is the place to make a political comeback. Ralph Caputo, elected to the State Assembly as a Republican in 1967 (and out of office since 1971), and ran for Freeholder as a Democrat in 2002 on County Executive candidate Joseph DiVincenzo’s ticket. He won a contested primary, and ousted incumbent Joseph Scarpelli (who mounted his own comeback this month when he won a Nutley Commissioner race) in the general election. Caputo returned to the State Assembly in 2007 – forty years after his first election.

New Jersey has a medium-sized controversy brewing: the naming of Route 23 after Robert Roe, who represented New Jersey in Congress from 1969 to 1993 and served as Chairman of the House Public Works and Transportation Committee. The Legislature almost unanimously (only Ellen Karcher voted no) approved the bill last year, and Governor Jon Corzine signed it – but now people are paying attention because of a complaint levied by a Morris County man whose wife and daughter were seriously injured in a 1993 car accident involving Roe, who was driving drunk at the time (a breathalyzer showed him at .17, well beyond the .10 legal limit). Roe entered into a plea bargain with prosecutors to avoid serious charges, and paid the family a settlement of more than $500,000.

Joseph Bubba served as a Passaic County Freeholder and Republican County Chairman before winning a seat in the New Jersey State Senate in 1981. He beat four-term Assemblyman (and former Senator) William Bate-- now the Passaic County Surrogate -- by a 53%-47% margin. Bubba only narrowly held the seat two years later, first in a bitter primary battle with Assemblyman Terry LaCorte, and then in a general election against Passaic County Freeholder James Roe, the brother of popular Congressman Robert Roe; Bubba won by only 974 votes. He beat Clifton attorney Donald Hetchka in 1987, Assemblyman Joseph Mecca in 1991, and former state Consumer Affairs Director Patricia Royer in 1993. He ran for Congress in 1992, when Roe retired, and lost to former Assemblyman Herbert Klein by a wide margin.

A long-running feud with Passaic County GOP Chairman Peter Murphy and Sheriff Edwin Englehardt finally ended his career in 1997 when he lost the Republican primary to Norman Robertson, then a Freeholder, by a 2-1 margin.

The 68-year-old Bubba retired to Florida six years ago and in 2004 attempted a political comeback as a candidate for the Pompano Beach City Commission. He received 235 votes -- just 8% -- in his fourth place finish. (The candidate who finished third lost by 27 percentage points and Bubba got less than half the number of votes she did.)

Today, Bubba -- sporting the Steve Ayscue look -- sells real estate for Coldwell Banker in Pompano Beach. Old friends can reach him at info@BubbaByTheSea.com.

Former State Treasurer John McCormac was unopposed in his bid for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Woodbridge, and becomes the strong favorite to win a November Special Election to fill the remaining thirteen months of the late Frank Pelzman's term. If he is successful, he will become the eighth person (under the current State Constitution) to win an election after leaving the cabinet: Brendan Byrne and Christine Todd Whitman both served as President of the Board of Public Utilities before becoming Governor; former Public Advocate Wilfredo Caraballo was later elected to the State Assembly; Elizabeth Randall served as Commissioner of Banking and Insurance before her election to the Bergen County Board of Freeholders; Robert Roe, the Commissioner of Conservation and Economic Development in the 1960's who went on to spend 23 years in Congress; former Secretary of State Edward Patten, who served in the House from 1963 to 1981; and former State Treasurer Feather O'Connor went on to win a seat on the Cranbury Township Committee.