On the Roberts for Senate speculation

Under the current New Jersey Constitution, only six Assembly Speakers have won election to the State Senate and only two, William Hamilton (D-Middlesex) and Barry Parker (R-Burlington) were sitting Speakers while running for State Senator.   

Hamilton was serving his first year as Speaker when seven-term incumbent John A. Lynch, Sr. retired in 1977.  Hamilton ran in the Democratic primary for Governor four years later, clearing the way for John A. Lynch, the Mayor of New Brunswick, to win a Senate seat. 

Parker was Speaker in 1971, the year he won a seat in the State Senate.  He was serving as Senate Minority Leader in 1981 when he left the Legislature to seek the Republican nomination for Governor.

Assembly Speaker Marion West Higgins (R-Bergen) ran for State Senator and lost the 1965 general election.  She remains the only woman to have served as Speaker.

The other Speakers-turned-Senators: Christopher Jackman (D-Hudson), the Speaker from 1978 through 1981.  He won a State Senate seat in 1983, moving up after William Vincent Musto’s criminal conviction.  Musto’s interim successor, Nicholas LaRocca, moved from the Senate to the Assembly that year; Frederick Hauser (D-Hudson), the Speaker in 1966, won a State Senate seat in 1967; Joseph Doria, who was Speaker in 1990-91 and went to the Senate in 2004 after already being out of the Legislature; and Alfred Beadleston (R-Monmouth), who was Speaker in 1964 and moved up to the Senate in 1967.  Beadleston became Senate President in 1973.