In an under-the-radar race in district 11, Republican Assemblyman Sean Kean is depicting his opponent as a big tax guy, a onetime member of the Assembly who voted for Gov. Jim Florio's tax hike in the early 1990s and subsequently lost his seat in Trenton.

In his stump speech, Kean uses the jaw-dropping jump in the state budget from $21 to $34 billion since Democrats took office. Given those figures, the last thing the state needs, in Kean's view, is John Villapiano, a broadly grinning, big-hearted liberal returning to Trenton.

Although their war hero presidential candidate is limping badly in the polls, GOP Assemblyman Bill Baroni and Assemblyman Sean Kean have no intentions of changing horses.

Both pro union New Jersey politicians - who are favored to win their races in the 14th and 11th districts respectively, still support U.S. Senator John McCain, who's at 8% among New Jersey Republican voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released last month.

That's 37 percentage points behind former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and four points in back of former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson.

With about five weeks to go before the general election, it’s risky to write off any political campaign as a lost cause. But several underdog candidates who once seemed to have a slight chance at running competitive races do not seem to have picked up steam or support from their parties.

State Senate candidates Robert Colletti, Richard Dennison, Gina Genovese and John Villapiano have all run spirited campaigns. And while none has a good shot at winning on November 6th, all four insist that their campaigns are very much alive.

Meanwhile, Seema Singh’s State Senate campaign isn’t necessarily dead, though it is on life support.

Assemblyman Sean T. Kean and Assemblywoman Jennifer Beck held a public meeting on Tuesday, August 28 to provide New Jersey residents with a forum in which to express their thoughts on the proposal to monetize the state’s toll roads and hear comments from various groups that will be directly impacted by this proposal.

In the 1970's and 1980's, the Villapiano family was fairly prominent in Central New Jersey, largely due to the athletic prowess of Phil Villapiano, an All-State high school football player who spent eight years as an NFL linebacker with the Oakland Raiders and Buffalo Bills.  He played on four bowl teams, and was a member of the Super Bowl XI championship team.

John Villapiano, who served in the Assembly from 1988 to 1990, is seeking a political comeback as a State Senate candidateThere’s a big dividing line in the 11th district, and it’s not just where the breakers catch the brunt of the ocean in Asbury under the Paramount Theater, or where the old Long Branch Boardwalk crumbled, leaving behind an eminent domain-purged stretch of high rises and attendant fufu shops.

It’s a line even older still, even more entrenched, that separates one town from another, rich from poor, where the median household income in Asbury Park is $23,081, and 30% of the16,546 population live below the poverty line, while in Rumson, population 7,137, the median household stands at $120,865.

If the latter is the district’s lavish hilltop paradise, there’s another divider in Asbury, a town in flux, where west of the railroad tracks the hard-bitten times are evident, and where to eastward the gay community continues to suffuse the place with redevelopment dollars and a touch of the Parisian. Up against the influx of gay yuppiedom, old guard dogs of the Jersey rock and roll scene like the Wonder Bar and the Stone Pony look one wayward wave removed from getting scrubbed off the map for keeps.

Democrats are spending money in four districts where they have a reasonable shot at picking up seats: against GOP incumbents Nicholas Asselta in district 1, Sonny McCullough in district 2, and Gerald Cardinale in the 39th; for open seats in District 8 (where Republican-turned-Democrat Assemblyman Francis Bodine faces Burlington County Clerk Philip Haines for the seat being vacated by retiring Senator Martha Bark.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT...

‘Crazy’

Commentary by the Daily Muse, In The Lobby, August 22, 2007

Once again, the Ministry of Monetization is trying to padlock its vault and throw away the key. Or at least keep it hidden until after the Nov. 6 election.

In an eye-popping quote, state Treasurer and Chief of Staff-designee Bradley Abelow admitted yesterday that “he thinks ‘we’d be crazy’ to unveil the plan on Oct. 15, for example, during the election season,” according to today’s Asbury Park Press.

The “plan,” of course, is the governor’s asset monetization proposal, where he hopes to infuse the state Treasury with billions of dollars gained by turning control of the state’s toll roads to a nonprofit, public entity, which would sell bonds to investors, who would recoup their investment by increasing tolls. Yes, how “crazy” to think the public should be allowed to know what the administration is planning before an election that might determine the likelihood of their success. Call us “crazy,” but we don’t see how keeping a plan hidden until it’s too late for the voters to do something about it is the mark of an “open and transparent” administration.

Anne Estabrook's U.S. Senate Exploratory Committee includes someone from the heart of Joe Pennacchio's political base: Carol Murphy, who lives in Pennacchio's hometown. It was Murphy's resignation from the State Assembly in 2001 (to become a Board of Public Utilities Commissioner) that opened the door for Pennacchio, then a Morris County Freeholder, to run for the Assembly.