UNION CITY - Election year means war, by the reckoning of Mayor Brian P. Stack.

The word's overused in New Jersey politics, but Stack chooses it carefully, based on his immersion in very rugged Hudson County campaigns.

Years ago, his biggest local adversary was U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-Union City), whom people here call "the hybrid," referring to Menendez's facility with both policy and politics.

Up for re-election in two years and reportedly jangled by the national political climate and Gov. Chris Christie's victory over Jon Corzine last year, Menendez and his allies know of few better, more hard-nosed political organizers than Stack - a short-list candidate to run the embattled Hudson County Democratic Organization (HCDO).  

Tending to his Union City base on Saturday morning, two days after he raised $600,000 at a fundraiser, Stack demonstrates why he's on - or at the top - of that countywide list.

Organizational self-sufficiency.

In a local election against an opponent he beat last time by 6-1, the two-term mayor/state senator stands at the front of a room packed with supporters who flow out onto 38th Street in front of Union City First headquarters. It's so crowded in here, if you turn suddenly, you could knock the glasses off the face of someone standing beside you.

Even if the Committee to Recall Robert Menendez succeeds in its court case and wins the right to start the recall process against New Jersey’s junior senator, they will face the nearly insurmountable task of collecting 1.3 million valid petition signatures. 

Nevertheless, Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Sayreville), the Democratic state chairman, weighed in today, suggesting that the group targeted Menendez because he is Hispanic.

“The attempt to recall Senator Menendez is an affront to the voters of New Jersey and has no standing in law,” said Wisniewski in a written statement.  “One day these folks are trying to disprove human evolution, the next day they are challenging the  constitutionality of the Constitution.  These are radical people who chose Menendez off of a list of Democrats because of the sound of his last name."

My New Jersey Mort Zuckerman Story Both national and local media have been reporting about the possibility of New York Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman seeking the Republican nomination for United States Senator from New York.  If nominated, Zuckerman would run against the Democrat incumbent Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, provided she is able to prevail against a possible primary election challenge from former Congressman from Tennessee Harold Ford, Jr. 

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park) was released from the hospital today.

"He is extremely grateful for the outpouring of support from New Jerseyans all across the state and is anxious to get back to work," said spokesman Caley Gray. "The Senator feels good and his doctors are encouraged by the progress he is making."     

Diagnosed last week with curable lymphoma, the 86-year old Lautenberg began chemotherapy treatments on Friday.

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg remains in the hospital today, according to his spokesman, Caley Gray. 

Gray said he did not know whether Lautenberg would have to spend a third night in the hospital.

Lautenberg, 86, was taken to an undisclosed hospital from his Cliffside Park condo on Monday night after a fall.  Early yesterday morning, doctors attributed the cause of the fall to a bleeding ulcer that made the Senator light headed. 

There are no further updates on his medical condition. 

""The Senator is recovering comfortably in the hospital.  He spoke with his staff several times today and is anxious to get back to work," said Gray.

UPDATED

The Record is reporting tonight that U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside) was transported to a hospital this evening as a precautionary measure after sustaining a fall in his Cliffside apartment.

"The senator is in great spirits and joking with the doctors," said spokesman Caley Gray. "He is going to stay overnight for routine observation."

Earlier tonight, Gray told Record reporter Herb Jackson that the 86-year-old senator was taken to the hospital "as a precaution," and "no further details were immediately available."

The senator capped a busy week when he returned to New Jersey late on Friday following six hours in Haiti, where he met with government officials and toured the earthquake-ravaged country as part of a U.S. delegation with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.).

On Saturday he did some interviews with local media at the Tick Tock Diner in Clifton, then later went to see the movie Avatar.

Sources say he told staffers that he felt sore today after suffering a spill, and this evening traveled to an area hospital via ambulance to get examined.

UNION CITY - Mayor Brian P. Stack grabbed a pen, wrote the number 115,000 and circled it and circled it again on a throw-away paper placemat in the Four Star Diner.

"That's what Democratic Party turnout should be in Hudson County in a non-presidential election year," he said, reaching for another cup of coffee.

In the 2009 gubernatorial election, then-Gov. Jon Corzine mustered 82,075 Hudson votes on his way to statewide defeat, a respectable  figure relative to Hudson County's own U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez's vote total of 88,696 in 2006, but unacceptable, in Stack's opinion, when considering Republican turnout in Ocean and Monmouth counties last year for Gov. Chris Christie and the potential for Christie to mobilize more GOP voters.

"Unacceptable, when you think about what organizing can get you," insisted Stack, generally regarded here as the fierce master architect of old school, constituent-based politics, who's longtime rep is that he'd rather drill down repeatedly into his own base than climb, who famously destroyed the Hudson County Democratic Organization (HCDO) with his 2007 state senate campaign.

Significantly, national brand Menendez, too, considers the numbers worrisome as he reels from Christie's win, and Scott Brown's GOP impact victory in the Massachusetts U.S. Senate race two weeks ago - larger landscape losses for the Democrat and chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which now put that much more pressure on his home county to produce overwhelming results when Menendez runs for reelection in 2012.

That's why it looks as though Menendez wants his hometown successor Stack to run the HCDO, a choice, which given Stack's renegade history - including past clashes with Menendez - has the potential to create short-term political strife - but long-term results, if the mayor and 33rd district senator's bottom line campaign history is any indication.

"I'm considering it right now," Stack told PolitickerNJ.com. "I haven't made up my mind totally right now. I would want to do the job my way, but I also wouldn't go into towns and dictate how mayors run their operations. There are also personal decisions about the time commitment. And, of course, I would have to make sure it doesn't interfere with what I do right now."  

Born in Perth Amboy and raised in Sayreville in the state's blue collar, old factory fountainhead, Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Sayreville) stands poised to succeed Joe Cryan as state chairman of the Democratic Party, having secured the support of all 21 county chairmen heading into a Jan. 27th state party committee convention at the Forsgate in Jamesburg. 

He arrives at the party's top dog spot in a different environment than did Cryan four years ago.

Riding Bush agony through the first part of the 21st Century, New Jersey Democrats felt the surge of successive victories leading all the way up through the 2008 presidential campaign, but as Wisniewski released a statement yesterday indicating his lock-up of key party support, Democrats simultaneously were either reeling or about to be dealt a double reel in the form of concussive losses: one here in New Jersey with the defeat last November of Gov. Jon Corzine.

The other hit came just last night in Massachusetts, - an hour or so after Wisniewski's press release - as Republican state Sen. Scott Brown wrested from Democrat Martha Coakley what many observers - until the Coakley campaign bore signs of unraveling last week - believed was a safe seat occupied for five decades by the late Edward Kennedy.

"I cant speak to the specifics of what happened in Massachusetts last night, as I wasn't on the ground," the 47-year old Wisniewski told PolitickerNJ.com. "But clearly, the winner was able to capitalize on the feeling of uncertainty and apprehension in the country as people do not exactly have an optimistic view of the future. People have concerns with unemployment at ten percent and so this was a unique opportunity for the Republican. I would exercise restraint before drawing large scale patterns from one or two elections. Corzine and Coakley obviously had similarities as candidates, I think, more than this spelling large-scale problems for Democrats."

NEWARK - Sizing up the news out of Massachusetts tonight that Democrat Martha Coakley lost to Republican state Sen. Scott Brown in the U.S. Senate special election, effectively dealing a blow to President Barack Obama's plans for healthcare reform, U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) said it's time for a Democratic Party gutcheck. 

"There is no question the president's agenda's will be modified, this is an absolute wakeup call and lets see if we respond," Pascrell told PolitickerNJ.com in a telephone interview.

"I think primary candidate Michael Capuano would have been better, more aggressive," added the congressman, backing away from Coakley, the would-be Democratic successor to the late U.S. Sen. Ted. Kennedy. "Martha Coakley is a very bright woman who couldn't get her message across while their candidate was a likeable guy."

For context, Pascrell pointed out that Democrats have won five straight special elections, but he did concede that Democrats and Obama must get focused and rally.

"Our message has been garbled with too many priorities," he said. "Of course, the economic situation warranting the stimulus package started under the Bush administration when (then Treasury Secretary Henry) Paulson came in the room and made it sound as if the world was going to collapse."

NEWARK - Just before launching into a rendition of "Mack the Knife," the crooner here at the Prudential Center gives this dance floor crowd political news from Massachusetts.

"Brown won," he announces.

As in Scott Brown, the Republican businessman pursuing the late Edward Kennedy's U.S. Senate seat, against Democrat and former Attorney General Martha Coakley.

"Brown won," the crooner exults again.

The crowd cheers.

With 63% of the vote counted, Brown leads Coakley by 85,000 votes, 53%-46%.