Rodney Frelinghuysen

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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.

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'Deep Throat' Mark Felt died today yesterday at age 95.

As a Republican Congressman who served out his final term during the Watergate scandal, Peter H.B. Frelinghuysen did not know Mark Felt, the FBI’s number two man who turned out to be the famous “Deep Throat.”

But, reflecting on Felt’s passing yesterday at the age of 95, Frelinghuysen said he did the right thing by leaking information to Bob Woodward, and wishes there were more whistleblowers like him.

“If it’s something that should be talked about, we should talk about it,” said Frelinghuysen, 92, whose family has been prominent in New Jersey politics for over two centuries. “The sad part about Nixon was we were ready to impeach him if he hadn’t resigned.”

Frelinghuysen entered the House in 1953 – the same year Dwight Eisenhower took over the presidency. But unlike many of his fellow Republicans in the mid-1970s anti-Nixon wave, Frelinghuysen’s retirement was not forced. After 22 years, he felt he had been in office long enough in his safe district.

Looking back on it, Frelinghuysen has a hard time understanding he motivations behind the players of the Watergate scandal.

U.S. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-Harding)

Republicans U.S. Rep Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-Harding) and U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-Hamilton) joined the entire Democratic Party congressional delegation from New Jersey to vote in favor of the $14 billion auto industry bailout tonight. 

The bailout passed in the U.S. House by a vote of 237 to 170, mostly along party lines, with only 32 Republicans joining Democrats to vote in the affirmative. 

U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-Vineland), U.S. Rep. Jim Saxton (R-Burlington), U.S. Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-New Providence) and U.S. Rep. Scott Garrett (R-Wantage) all voted against the bailout package.

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.

U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews' 201,163 votes in the 2004 general election is the most received by any House candidate in New Jersey history

Republican Christopher Smith received 198,446 votes in his bid for re-election to a fifteenth term in the U.S. House of Representatives. That was the most total votes received by any House candidate in the 2008 cycle, and the third highest total votes in state history. (Smith's 2004 votes also gives him the #6 slot.)

The record for the most all-time votes goes to Rob Andrews in 2004.

Democrat Rush Holt, who won 181,189 votes, makes the list of the Top Ten All-Time Votegetters in New Jersey Congressional races; Republican Rodney Frelinghuysen, whose 2004 totals put him second on the all-time list, is also ranked #10, thanks to the 177,039 votes he received last week.

The Top Ten All-Time Votegetters in New Jersey Congressional races:

John Adler won a seat in Congress eighteen years after his first House race.

Now it seems trendy to run for Congress, lose, then spend a lot of years in state government before finally making it to Washington.  In 2006, Albio Sires won an open House seat twenty years after his first attempt.  Sires had challenged U.S. Rep. Frank Guarini as a Republican in 1986; he later won local office in West New York, and after switching parties in 1999, he beat an incumbent Assemblyman in the Democratic primary.  He became Assembly Speaker after the 2001 election, and went to Congress after Bob Menendez joined the United States Senate.

Both of New Jersey's freshmen Congressman had previously lost House races.  John Adler ran against Jim Saxton in 1990 and lost 60%-40%.  A year later, despite one of the two biggest Republican landslides in state political history, he ousted four-term GOP State Sen. Lee Laskin.  Leonard Lance first ran for Congress in 1996, when Richard Zimmer gave up his seat to run for U.S. Senate; he finished third in the GOP primary, behind Michael Pappas and John Bennett. Lance moved from the Assembly to the Satate Senate in 2001, and became Minority Leader in 2004.

The Fuzzy Math Award for 2008 goes to the campaign coordinator for Democrat Tom Wyka, who attempts to spell out exactly how Rodney Frelinghuysen will lose his seat in Congress next month.  Milin Shah cites the Wyka campaign's "current polling" as evidence of the suddenly competitive race in this strongly-Republican congressional district, although the last Federal Election Commission report shows more money spent at Blimpie's in Morristown than on polling (zero). Wyka has recieved $60,001, as of his last report.

The text of the Wyka statement:

It’s not exactly a surprise, but the incumbent Congressmen in safe districts who have statewide aspirations tend to have the largest war chests.

Take, for instance, U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch).  His Republican opponent, former Judge Robert McLeod, didn’t even raise the $5,000 that would require him to fill out a report with the Federal Election Commission.  But Pallone is raising and spending money anyway, raking in $302,139 last quarter for a total of $2.18 million this election cycle.  He has $3.36 million on hand – the largest war chest in Congress – and spent $304,000 this quarter.

That money is not being spent against McLeod.  The expenditures listed in the FEC report includes a $189,015 cable television ad buy.  The commercial, which began on Tuesday, is playing all over the state north of Interstate 195, in places well beyond Pallone’s district.

With the House likely to vote on the revised bailout package tomorrow, six of the seven New Jersey congressmen who voted against it on Monday have either not decided or not indicated how they will vote tomorrow. 

Only Scott Garrett (R-Wantage) has given any inkling as to how he’ll vote.  On Fox News this morning, he said that the bill has barely changed.

“Basically we’re getting the exact same bill with some pork added to it to sweeten things up.  And that doesn’t make matters better. It really makes matters worse,” he said. 

Temple Beth Am of Parsippany will host an 11th Congressional District candidates forum between 10 a.m. and noon on Sunday, Oct. 26.

U.S. Rep Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-Harding) and his Democratic challenger, Tom Wyka, are scheduled to speak and answer questions from the audience.

The event is free and open to the public.

Frelinghuysen defeated Wyka in their 2006 matchup.