Thomas Kean

Democratic Assemblyman Reed Gusciora is calling for tougher penalties for people who hunt while drinking: the Gusciora Drunken Hunting Act of 2006 raises the fine for HWI from $50 to $350, and and calls for a 45-day jail term if someone is hurt. The new proposal was timed just as Vice President Richard Cheney visited New Jersey in support of Tom Kean's campaign for the United States Senate.

About one out of every four New Jerseyans who say they will vote for Tom Kean for United States Senator said they like him because they liked his father, former Governor Thomas Kean, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll. Kean, a State Senator from Union County, has a favorability rating of 18%-6%. The incumbent, Robert Menendez, has a 21%-10% favorability rating.

Some party insiders close to Bergen County Republican Chairman Guy Talarico says that if Tom Kean declines to run on the organization line, Talarico will consider recruiting a more conservative candidate to run on his line for the United States Senate. Complicating matters is chatter within Bergen GOP circles that Kean personally encouraged Kathleen Donovan to run for County Executive.

For twenty years, Republican Clifford Case and Democrat Harrison Williams served together as United States Senators from New Jersey. Case sought re-election to a fifth term in 1978, but narrowly lost the Republican primary to a little-known conservative, former Reagan speechwriter Jeffrey Bell. Bell lost the general election to Bill Bradley by a 55%-45% margin, but many pundits believe that Case would have won the general election had he been the nominee. Williams' political career ended after an FBI sting operation videotaped him accepting a bribe. Williams resigned on March 11, 1982, just as the Senate was about to begin a vote to expel him. Case, who taught Political Science at Rutgers University after leaving the Senate, died on just six days earlier. Had Case won re-election in 1978, newly-elected Governor Thomas Kean would have had the opportunity to make two appointments to the United States Senate. New Jersey voters would have then elected two U.S. Senators in the 1982 election, with separate campaigns for a six-year term and a two-year unexpired term.

Republicans were were feeling optimistic about their chances in 1982. Ronald Reagan had easily carried New Jersey in 1980 and Kean, albeit narrowly, had won election as Governor. Since their Watergate era losses, Republicans had picked up four congressional seats, eight State Senate seats and 23 seats in the State Assembly. Four candidates were seeking support for the GOP Senate nomination: Congresswoman Millicent Fenwick, Congressman James Courter, former Republican State Chairman David Norcross (who had run against Williams in 1976), and Bell. Congressman James Florio, who had lost the Governor's race to Kean by just 1,797 votes statewide, was viewed as the strongest Democratic candidate, but he declined to run.

Kean carefully mulled his options in appointing a Republican to replace Williams, with the U.S. Senate seat remaining vacant for four weeks before Kean finally arrived at a decision. Courter and Bell had played prominent roles in Kean's '81 primary campaign, and Fenwick and Norcross had worked for Kean's campaign against Florio. Ultimately, Kean was unwilling to create a situation where his party would run an incumbent in the '82 general election at the risk of choosing between friends. He appointed Nicholas Brady, an unknown Wall Street investment banker and family friend, as a caretaker, allow Republicans to choose between Fenwick and Bell in the June primary. The Democrats, without a clear front-runner, nominated a self-funding millionaire businessman, Frank Lautenberg, who defeated two former Congressmen in the primary, and after a rather well-run campaign, Fenwick in the general. Case remains the last Republican to win a United States Senate seat in New Jersey.

Footnote: Case's 1978 primary campaign was managed by Anthony Ciciatiello, who first came to New Jersey in 1974 to run Kean's campaign for Congress. Kean ran for the open seat being vacated by eleven-term Republican Peter Frelinghuysen (the father of the current Congressman), but lost the primary to Fenwick by just 84 votes. Ciciatiello directed President Gerald Ford's New Jersey campaign in 1976 (Ford carried the state over Jimmy Carter by 65,000 votes) and then ran Kean's unsuccessful campaign for Governor in 1977 against State Senator Raymond Bateman. Ciciatiello eventually formed a lobbying and public relations firm, and is now an advisor to Tom Kean, Jr.'s U.S. Senate campaign.

Decades have past since the classic civil wars of Bergen County Republican politics in the 1960's and 1970's, when bitter enemies like State Senators Walter Jones and Pearce Deamer, or Republican County Chairmen like Nelson Gross and Anthony Statile ran full slates in primary campaigns that forced Republicans -- from low-level county employees to candidates for statewide office -- to take sides in their almost yearly intra-party battles. In recent years, open conventions have allowed more than 1,200 elected GOP County Committee members to award the organization line, avoiding more expensive and divisive primary contests. Now, there are indications that two candidates will face off in a primary for County Executive that is seemingly intertwined with a challenge to the incumbent Republican County Chairman, Guy Talarico.

Talarico is backing former Freeholder and gubernatorial candidate Todd Caliguire, who was unopposed for the GOP nomination until last week, when the party's top vote-getter in recent years, County Clerk Kathleen Donovan, entered the race. Donovan has the backing of Alan Marcus, a Trenton lobbyist who ran the county GOP oganization in the days of the old-time wars, and may form her own line in the primary rather than deal with Talarico and Caliguire at a convention. The lone Republican Freeholder in Bergen, Elizabeth Randall, announced today that she would run with Donovan -- even if that means eschewing the organization line. Randall's would-be running mate, former Wyckoff Board of Education member Robert Yudin, has not said whether he will run on the organization line or seek to join Randall on the Donovan slate. Randall could potentially lose her primary, which would send the GOP ticket into the general election without their only incumbent.

Several Bergen Republicans are now wondering whether Caliguire, who finished last in Bergen County in his '05 run for Governor, will remain in the race against Donovan, a four-term County Clerk and ex-Assemblywoman. Caliguire didn't bargain for a primary, and a costly battle for his party nomination won't necessarily help him oust the Democrat, Dennis McNerney, who has the advantage of incumbency and of the Bergen Democratic warchest. If Caliguire does drop out, party insiders predict that another candidate would emerge -- perhaps Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan, the de facto leader of the state's conservative Republican wing. Lonegan is not likely to back Donovan.

Competing primary slates could force U.S. Senate candidate Thomas Kean and Congressman Scott Garrett will need to decide whether they want to run on the organization line, on the Donovan slate, or on no line at all. Bergen is a must-win county for Kean in a general, and a divided party reduces his chance of building the kind of plurality Kean needs to offset U.S. Senator Robert Menendez's likely margins in Hudson and Essex counties.

Indirectly, an anti-organization primary slate is responsible for Caliguire's own political career. In 1977, the Bergen County Republican Organization endorsed State Senator Raymond Bateman for Governor. Bateman's main opponent, Assembly Minority Leader Thomas Kean, ran a full line of Freeholder and legislative candidates in Bergen County. While Bateman won Bergen, Kean carried the towns in the old 40th district -- causing two incumbent Assemblymen running on the Bateman line two lose the primary to the two Kean-backed candidates, Oakland Councilman Cary Edwards and attorney Walter Kern. When Kean was elected Governor four years later, he picked Edwards to serve as Chief Counsel. In turn, Edwards hired Caliguire to work for him.

The only privately-owned port operation in New Jersey has contributed to both candidates in the race for United States Senate: members of the Maher Family, which owns Maher Terminals, have contributed $12,000 to Bob Menendez and $10,000 to Tom Kean. Additionally, the Maher Terminals PAC gave $10,000 to Menendez's campaign. Maher executives and PAC contributed $50,000 to Menendez's House campaigns over the past six years, and $1,000 to Kean's unsuccessful 2000 congressional campaign. Neither Senate candidate has received campaign contributions from lawyers at Alston & Bird, the lobbyists for Dubai Ports World, or from the Alston & Bird PAC; and neither candidate has received campaign contributions from any of the operators of private operators of ports owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The first debate in the race for U.S. Senate could have occurred as early as last Friday, when both candidates addressed the Southern New Jersey Development Council in Atlantic County. The group became the audience for Tom Kean's interview with New Jersey Network senior political correspondent Michael Aron; Robert Menendez spoke earlier, but turned down a joint NJN interview with Kean.

By Steve Adubato, Ph.D.

So what is the deal with this proposed contract that the Bush administration plans on awarding to Dubai Ports World (DP World) to take over port container terminals in a variety of East Coast areas including New Jersey and Philadelphia?

DP World, which is based in the United Arab Emirates, appears to have won the contract in a straightforward fashion. President Bush has argued that the United Arab Emirates has been an ally and a friend to the United States, particularly on our war against terrorism. The president also argues that we need to send the message around the world that the U.S. is willing to reach out to the Arab world.

On many levels, much of this is true, but not much of it is relevant because it is clear that in port areas like New Jersey and Philadelphia, as well as others in New York and Baltimore, the post-9/11 world we live in has changed our perception of ourselves and the Arab world forever.

Recently in the Star-Ledger, former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean, who headed up the 9/11 commission and extensively examined our ports and how vulnerable they were to terrorism attacks, made the following comments; "It [DP World] is a responsible company from everything I know. Should that make a difference? Yes. Will it? No, because of the symbolism and the political reality. This deal should have been killed when it was first suggested…Politically, certain things are very hard to argue. You can make the case, in about 20 minutes perhaps, why the deal should be considered. You can make an argument in about 30 seconds why it shouldn’t, and people are going to buy that argument."

Here is the point. In the post-9/11 world residents in New Jersey, including those of us in the north who are close to New York, and in the south, bordering Philadelphia, have a very clear view of what we want from our governmental leaders when it comes to fighting terrorism. What we want is them to do everything humanly possible to protect us against what in some cases may be inevitable. We are even willing to have the civil and in some cases constitutional rights of certain ethnic groups be infringed upon. No one wants to talk about it. No one will admit it. But it is true.

Think about it. The ports in New Jersey are laughably vulnerable. No more than 5 percent of all the containers that come in the port area are even inspected. What’s more, foreign companies have been in control of certain port activities for years. In fact, the port area in question has become news because of the federal government’s allowing a sale of a London-based company to DP Ports World. If an English-based company were running container port activity in New Jersey or Philadelphia, would everyone be up-in-arms? Obviously not. This whole thing is like racial profiling, but only against Arabs at our ports.

In spite of all this, I agree the deal should be stopped. Not based on logic or what’s rational, but because 9/11 is still too emotionally close for too many of us in and around New Jersey. The attack and its aftermath are too fresh in our minds for us to be open-minded and fair about an Arab-based company taking control of a New Jersey or Philadelphia based port. It shouldn’t happen and it's not going to happen. Maybe 10 years from now it will be possible. But not now. It's amazing that the president and his advisors don’t understand that. But if they had talked to the Congressional delegation in New Jersey, they would have known that the deal was a non-starter.

And when Republicans like former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean publicly blast the deal and say this deal was an avoidable "self-inflicted" wound, it sends a powerful message to their Republican friends in the White House. Hopefully the president will understand and we can move forward. If not, this debate will distract us from the more tangible and substantive actions that must be taken to truly protect our ports in Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York.

One of Tom Kean's big issues in his race for the United States Senate was supposed to be Homeland Security, but Bob Menendez's fight to prevent the sale of operations at several major U.S. ports to a company owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates may be moving the "better security after 9/11" issue to the Democratic column. The freshman Democratic Senator has received a tremendous amount of attention over the last week, while Kean has been fairly quiet on the issue.

Unlike his Pingry classmate, Ronald Rice Jr. is keeping the Junior suffix in his campaign for City Councilman in Newark's West Ward. The Newark election this May might feature two Rice's on the ballot -- his father, State Senator Ronald Rice, is raising money to run for Mayor -- perhaps as Sharpe James' annointed successor. Rice Jr. has already committed to backing another candidate, Cory Booker; he will run on Booker's slate, as he did in 2002, when his father endorsed James. Rice and GOP U.S. Senate candidate Thomas Kean both graduated from the prestigious prep school in 1986; at the time, Kean's father was Governor and Rice's father was the West Ward Councilman (the death of Senator John Caufield in August 1986 paved the way for him to go to the Senate ten weeks later.) And for those who believe in technical correctness: Ronald L. Rice is the father of Ronald C. Rice -- so while Kean has dropped the Jr. suffix, Rice has basically picked it up.