Part Two: The Democrats who will decide Lonegan's fate

Two Democratic members of the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission, who may play a critical role in deciding the fate of Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Lonegan, are Trenton veterans who have spent six decades in New Jersey politics.  Both Albert Burstein and Jerry Fitzgerald English have enjoyed successful political careers, although each fell quite short of achieving their full public service ambitions.

 The Texas-born English (D-Summit) moved to New Jersey after law school at Boston College and Harvard when her husband took a job as Bell Labs researcher.  She founded a local conservation group in 1969, and in 1971, at the age of 36, she became the second woman to serve in the New Jersey State Senate.  English won a November 1971 special election to fill the remaining two months of a vacant Union County Senate seat.  She was not a candidate for a full term, and served until January 1972.

In 1972, English decided to run for Congress after eight-term U.S. Rep. Florence Dwyer (R-Elizabeth) announced her retirement.  She beat Richard Samuel, who had played a role in the New Jersey presidential campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, in the Democratic primary.  In the general election, State Sen. Matthew Rinaldo (R-Union) beat English by a wide margin, 64%-36% in a district that went 2-1 for Richard Nixon.  English never ran for office again.

Following her race for Congress, English went back to Trenton to work for Senate Minority Leader Edward Crabiel as Counsel to the Senate Democrats.  After Crabiel ended his bid for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, English joined the campaign staff of another candidate, Brendan Byrne.

When Byrne took office as Governor in 1974, English was named legislative counsel to the Governor.  While serving as counsel, she was also a Commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

In early 1979, English was short-listed for one of four vacant seats on the U.S. District Court.  Byrne had asked that English get one of the two seats, and his endorsement was initially viewed as valuable because he supported Jimmy Carter for the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination even as powerful New Jersey Democratic leaders backed an uncommitted slate that would go to Hubert Humphrey or Jerry Brown.  English was considered a front runner, along with Lee Sarokin, William Walls, an African American Superior Court Judge who was being pushed by Newark Mayor Kenneth Gibson, and Vincent Commisa, who had been strongly recommended by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter Rodino (D-Newark).

But the state's two Democratic U.S. Senators, Harrison Williams and Bill Bradley, had their own plans.  Sarokin, who served as Bradley's 1978 Finance Chairman, got one of the seats.  But the Senators went with their own choices: Anne Thompson, Dickinson Debevoise, and Harold Ackerman.

Bradley may still have been peeved over an incident during the 1978 Democratic U.S. Senate primary.  A secretary in the office of the legislative counsel, who said she was calling at English's request, was caught making fundraising calls from the statehouse on behalf of Bradley's primary opponent, former State Treasurer Richard Leone.  English called the incident a misunderstanding, and said Byrne, who had endorsed Leone, was not aware of the calls and was not in the office at the time.  Bradley still used the episode to slam the Byrne administration for using state phones to solicit campaign contributions.

(For extreme political junkies: Leone's campaign manager in the '78 Senate primary was Gordon MacInnes, a former Assemblyman who beat Senate Majority Leader John Dorsey in 1993.) 

In 1979, Byrne appointed English to serve in his cabinet as Commissioner of Environmental Protection.  She ran the DEP until two months into Tom Kean's administration in 1982. 

English, 74, has served on the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission since 2004 and has been chairman since her first year in office.