Michael Doherty. a West Point graduate and one of the state's most conservative legislators, will take his seat in the State Senate today.  A four-term Assemblyman, Doherty defeated incumbent Marcia Karrow in the GOP primary.  Doherty becomes the first Senator from Warren County since the legendary Wayne Dumont left the Legislature in 1990.

The #1 process issue of the 1965 campaign for Governor of New Jersey was over a Rutgers University professor who was a self-professed Marxist.  The GOP nominee, State Sen. Wayne Dumont (R-Phillipsburg) sought to hold Democratic Gov. Richard Hughes accountable for refusing to call for the firing of Prof. Eugene Genovese.

During an April '65 teach-in on the Vietnam War, Genovese told students: "Those of you who know me know that I am a Marxist and a Socialist.  Therefore, unlike most of my distinguished colleagues here this morning, I do not fear or regret the impending Vietcong victory in Vietnam.  I welcome it."

Hughes called Genovese's comments offensive, but declined to get involved in the politics of calling for the termination of a state university professor.  Dumont demanded that Genovese be fired, and said that the Rutgers teach-ins were "part and parcel of an organized conspiracy to undermine our position in Vietnam."

Dumont spent the next three months seeking to link the governor to the Rutgers issue, even going as far as to suggest that Hughes did not understand the danger of communism.  But the Warren County Republican stopped short of saying that Hughes was soft on communism. 

Hughes accused Dumont of politicizing dead American soldiers in Vietnam, and said that his Republican rival was an extremist.  "By using for his own little political gain the individual tragedies of young men dead in Vietnam, in what can only be called a kind of ‘vampire politics,' my opponent has opened a Pandora's box for the extremists of this state and nation," Hughes said.

In the old days, State Senators either moved up (often to a judgeship) or out.  Of the Senators who have served since 1845, when a new State Constitution began elected one Senator from every county, only eleven men have spent more than twenty years in the Senate.  Of those eleven, four are there now, and another two left within the last decade.

New Jersey's longest-serving State Senators, since 1845:

One of the best legislative contests of the 20th century came in 1955, when two future billionaires faced off to represent Somerset County in the New Jersey State Senate. The Republican incumbent, magazine publisher Malcom S. Forbes, defeated industrialist Charles W. Englehard, Jr. by just 370 votes, 19,981 to 19,611.

Forbes launched his political career four years earlier, at age 31, when he mounted a massive door-to-door campaign to defeat the incumbent, Freas L. Hess, in the Republican primary. Hess, 55, who had the backing of the Somerset GOP organization, had won a Senate seat in 1947 after nine years in the Assembly that included terms as Speaker and Majority Leader.

When John DiMaio takes his seat in the State Assembly sometime over the next few weeks, it will become the first time in history that two Warren County residents will be serving together in the lower house.  DiMaio, at least until January 2010, will serve with his onetime friend and political ally, four-term Assemblyman Michael Doherty.

The last time Warren had two legislators was in 1990, when eleven-term State Senator Wayne Dumont resigned for health reasons.  At the time, the district included parts of Warren and Sussex counties.  The Warren County legislator was Chuck Haytaian, then the Assembly Minority Leader.  Twelve-term Assemblyman Robert Littell moved up to the Senate, and he was replaced by another Sussex County Republican, Scott Garrett.

If you are a New Jersey State Senator, you are more likely to die in office than to win higher elective office. Under the current State Constitution, 49 sitting State Senators have asked voters to promote them to a new office, but only twelve have won.

Nearly half of the State Senators seeking higher office have run for Governor and all 21 have lost: Malcolm Forbes (1957), Wayne Dumont (1965), Raymond Bateman (1977) and James E. McGreevey (1997) won major party nominations but list the general election -- each time to an incumbent; William Schluter ran as an Independent in 2001; and Walter Jones (1961), Charles Sandman (1965), William Kelly (1969), Frank McDermott (1969), William Ozzard (1969), Harry Sears (1969), Ralph DeRose (1973), Raymond Garramone (1977), Frank Dodd (1981), William Hamilton (1981), Joseph Merlino (1981), James Wallwork (1981), Bill Gormley (1989) and Gerald Cardinale (1989).

In the 23rd Legislative District’s battle of endorsements, assemblywoman and state senate candidate Marcia Karrow (R-Flemington) today announced the support of nine mayors from Warren County municipalities.

Karrow is competing with fellow Assemblyman Mike Doherty (R-Washington Twp.) and Hunterdon County Freeholder Matt Holt for the state senate seat being vacated by Congressman-elect Leonard Lance (R-Clinton).

The mayors are Robert Resker (Allamuchy Township), Bonnie Butler (Franklin Township), Thomas Charles (Frelinghuysen Township), Kevin Duffy (Township of Hardwick), Robert Giordano (Independence Township), John Inscho (Liberty Township), Ellen Nerback (Township of Mansfield), Harry Wyant, Jr. (Phillipsburg) and Marianne Van Deursen (Borough of Washington).

There are 22 municipalities in Warren County, 16 of which have partisan-elected Republican mayors.

An insurance company is suing a Monmouth County law firm for malpractice, alleging that the firm used their political connections to get the case and that their lawyer, freshman Assemblywoman Caroline Casagrande, didn't know what she was doing. 

The original suit involved a woman, Carol Carpenter, who was "riding in a county medical transportation bus to a dialysis session when she fell out of her wheelchair and broke her right leg. Doctors amputated the leg two weeks later." When she sued the county the case was assigned to Cleary, Alfieri & Jones, a politically active firm with strong ties to the Monmouth GOP.  

The complaint filed by North River Insurance Co. says that "none of the attorneys who handled the case were in the least familiar with the duties of defense counsel, or even the rudiments of litigation practice" and that Casagrande, an associate who had one year of experience at the time, "should have received close supervision, but didn't, and her memos showed she wasn't well versed in the facts... A look at her analysis of the damages issue also reveals that she had totally missed the point."

"The Cleary firm was eligible for this appointment by virtue of its political activities rather than by virtue of its qualifications as an insurance defense firm," the complaint notes.  "It required skillful defense counsel rather than political appointees."  James Cleary, a partner at the firm, has served as assistant county counsel and counsel to the Western Monmouth Utilities Authority. 

Robert Yudin, a 67-year-old appliance store owner from Wyckoff, could be one day away from becoming the Bergen County Republican Chairman – a post that up until about six years ago was one of the most powerful positions in New Jersey politics.  Yudin will face incumbent Rob Ortiz in a runoff election tomorrow night.  Over the last few years, the former Wyckoff Board of Education member has made three unsuccessful bids for Freeholder.

Yudin's first campaign for public office came 41 years ago, when the 26-year-old Navy lieutenant who had just left active duty was recruited by Essex County Republicans as their candidate for Assemblyman.