Walter Foran

Actor Dick Foran, the son of Senate President Arthur Foran and the brother of veteran legislator Moose Foran, in The Sisters with Bette Davis.

Arthur Foran was elected Mayor of Flemington in 1916 and during the campaign became friends with the Republican candidate for Governor, Walter Edge.  After Edge won, Foran went with him to Trenton as his aide.  He left to become a Colonel in the U.S. Army during World War I and was the military aide to the Governor of New Jersey.  He served as Controller of the Port of New York under Presidents Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. 

In 1930, the Anti-Saloon League opposed his renomination, saying that he had looked the other way when alcohol shipments came into the port.  Political opponents, including a candidate for Republican State Committeeman in Hunterdon and a disgruntled former customs agent, organized a dry raid on Foran's Hunterdon County hunting lodge, which had a bar and a slot machine.   The controversy went on for several months, but with the support of New Jersey's two U.S. Senators, Edge and Hamilton Kean, the grandfather of the future Governor, Foran won Senate approval.

Anne Martindell (1914-2008) served in the New Jersey State Senate from 1974 to 1977.Former State Sen. Anne Clark Martindell, a Democrat who won an upset victory in a solidly Republican legislative district in 1973 and went on to become the United States Ambassador to New Zealand, passed away on Wednesday.  She was 93.

Martindell became involved in politics in 1968 when her brother, Blair Clark, was the campaign manager for Eugene McCarthy’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.  She ran for State Senator in a Hunterdon County-based district that included Princeton, Pennington and the Hopewells, and narrowly defeated incumbent Bill Schluter in 1973, when Watergate caused Republicans to lose ten State Senate seats. 

She left the Senate in 1977 when President Jimmy Carter appointed her to serve as an Ambassador.  Her Senate seat was won by Republican Walter Foran.