Campaigns don't wait for funerals

Just to be clear, would-be candidates don't wait until funerals to begin campaigning for open seats.   It took Hudson County Democrats less than an hour to convene conferences following the death of Jersey City Mayor/State Sen. Glenn Cunningham died in 2004.  Campaigns were underway before the funerals of Assemblymen Melvin Cottrell (R-Jackson) and Thomas Smith (R-Asbury Park), and there were political discussions at the funerals of Assemblymen Monroe Lustbader (R-Short Hills) and Alan Augustine (R-Scotch Plains). 

It took less time for Essex Democrats to pick Evelyn Williams (D-Newark) for a State Assembly seat after the death of Donald Tucker (D-Newark) than it did to pick Oadline Truitt (D-Newark) after Williams was arrested for shoplifting days after she took office.

Posturing doesn't always wait for an actual death certificate.  When State Senators Byron Baer (D-Englewood) and Walter Kavanaugh (R-Somerville) became ill, potential successors began to shore up votes in anticipation of a retirement.  And make no mistake: the campaign to succeed 85-year-old U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg has been underway for the last eight months.

But Senatorial aspirants ought not assume that Lautenberg will retire in 2014, when he is 90.  Political junkies need only remember the story of Theodore Green, a Democratic politician from Rhode Island. Green was 69-years-old when he was elected to the Senate in 1936. Because of his age, it was assumed that he would have a short career in the Senate. But Green went on to serve four terms, retiring in 1960 when he was 93. An entire generation of Rhode Island politicians miscalculated by planning their political careers on the assumption that Green would soon retire.