Warren Wilentz

The death of Jack Kemp leaves six living former unsuccessful major party nominees for Vice President: Sargent Shriver (1972), Bob Dole (1976), Geraldine Ferraro (1984), Joe Lieberman (2000), John Edwards (2004) and Sarah Palin (2008).  There are also five living former Vice Presidents.  Of the six, three -- Dole, Lieberman and Edwards -- carried New Jersey.

In New Jersey, there are eleven living former unsuccessful major party candidates for United States Senator: Warren Wilentz (1966), David Norcross (1976), Jeff Bell (1978), Mary Mochary (1984), Peter Dawkins (1988), Christine Todd Whitman (1990), Chuck Haytaian (1994), Dick Zimmer (1996 and 2008), Bob Franks (2000), Douglas Forrester (2002) and Tom Kean, Jr. (2006).

New Jersey also has five living unsuccessful major party candidates for Governor: Raymond Bateman (1977), Peter Shapiro (1985), Jim Courter (1989), Bret Schundler (2001), and Douglas Forrester (2005).  Two other losing gubernatorial candidates, Jim Florio (1981 and 1993) and James E. McGreevey (1997) were subsequently elected Governor.

The national political environment favored the GOP in 1966.  It was the mid-term election of Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson, and the war in Vietnam had just begun to divide the nation.  

In New Jersey, Republican Clifford Case was seeking re-election to a third term in the United States Senate, and even though Democrats scored huge wins a year earlier (Governor Richard Hughes was re-elected in a landslide and Democrats captured both houses of the Legislative), few believed the popular Case, with strong support from traditional Democratic base voters like organized labor, was going to lose.

Connie Williams, a Pennsylvania State Senator, comes from one of New Jersey's most prominent Democratic families. She is the granddaughter of the legendary David Wilentz, a former Attorney General of New Jersey and the Middlesex County Democratic boss for more than forty years. She is the niece of Warren Wilentz, the Democratic candidate for United States Senator in 1966 (against Clifford Case), and of Robert Wilentz, a former Assemblyman who served as Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court from 1979 to 1996. Her father was Leon Hess, the oil company mega millionaire and longtime owner of the New York Jets. The 62-year-old Williams was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 1996 and to the Senate in 2000.