Thomas Giblin

Some candidates will admit they’re long shots, that the odds are stacked against them. But they don’t consider themselves “kamikaze candidates.”

Rev. Clenard Childress switched parties in January and is the GOP Assembly candidate against Tom Giblin and Sheila OliverTake Rev. Clenard H. Childress, Jr. who’s running for the State Assembly as a Republican in the 34th District. Talk to him about his campaign, and you can tell he’s a man of faith.

“Most of what I do is long shots, trust me. But I believe our message resonates with the community, and we’re looking forward to a spirited debate,” said Childress, a Montclair resident who is running with Robert Bianco; there is no Republican state Senate candidate.

GIBLIN STATEMENT ON RECOMMENDATIONS FROM BENEFITS REFORM COMMITTEE

(TRENTON) -- Assemblyman Thomas P. Giblin, a member of the Joint Legislative Committee on Public Employee Benefits Reform, today voiced strong support for the findings and reform recommendations unveiled this morning by co-chairs Senator Nicholas P. Scutari (D-Union) and Assemblywoman Nellie Pou (D-Passaic/Bergen).

Giblin (D-Essex/Passaic) issued the following statement:

Over the last twenty years, contests for Essex County Executive were among the most exciting in the state. In 1986, Democrat-turned-Republican Nicholas Amato ousted incumbent Peter Shapiro, who had been the Democratic candidate for Governor the year before. For years later, Amato switched back to the Democratic side, but the nomination went to Sheriff Thomas D'Alessio, who narrowly beat the Deputy Mayor of Millburn just as Governor Jim Florio began to increase taxes. By 1994, D'Alessio was in prison and Republican James Treffinger defeated East Orange Mayor Cardell Cooper, who had won the Democratic primary by a single-digit margin over Thomas Giblin. Treffinger won re-election narrowly (52%) in 1998 against former Newark Mayor Kenneth Gibson -- that was between the indictment Gibson beat and the one he did not. In 2002 it was Treffinger who was in trouble -- he was the front runner for the GOP U.S. Senate nomination (against Bob Torricelli) when FBI agents raided his Newark office, ending his political career. Democrats had a hotly contested primary between Giblin, the former Democratic State Chairman, and Joseph DiVincenzo, then the Freeholder President. The general election featured DiVincenzo and anti-county government, anti-Newark Arena Candace Straight, a GOP fundraiser former Sports Authority Commissioner who spent over $500,000 of her own money. But as DiVincenzo prepares to seek re-election to a second term in 2006, he looks extraordinarily solid: he has no major problems among the traditionally divisive Essex Democrats, and Republicans have few prospects to run a competitive race. And after DiVincenzo's Chief of Staff, Phil Alagia, delivered an 85,500 vote plurality as head of Jon Corzine's Essex County campaign, possible opponents are running away.

Thomas Giblin, a shoo-in to win election to the New Jersey State Assembly today -- he has no Republican opponent in the 34th district -- will go to Trenton on his second try -- 32 years after his first Assembly bid. In 1973, Giblin ran in the old 25th district, which extended from Millburn through West Essex into Wayne in Passaic County and Lincoln Park and Pequannock in Morris County. That was the year of the Watergate landslide that left only fourteen Republicans in the Assembly, and Giblin nearly won this solidly Republican district. His opponents were Thomas Kean, then the Assembly Speaker, and Jane Burgio, later Kean's Secretary of State, who had replaced incumbent Phil Kaltenbacher (who would be Kean's first GOP State Chairman in 1981). Kean was the top vote-getter with 32,708 votes; Burgio beat Giblin by 1,079 -- 27,869 to 26,790. Giblin finished second in Wayne and received the most number of votes in the Morris County portion of the district. Giblin, whose father, John Giblin, served as an Essex County Freeholder, and from 1966 to 1968 as a State Senator, had already joined the family business as a labor leader. He was elected Freeholder in 1977, returned to the Freeholder Board in 1980's, became Essex County Surrogate, and then Essex County Democratic Chairman. He was the Democratic State Chairman from 1997 to 2001 and lost primaries for County Executive in 1990 and 2002.