A tale of two Orange politicians

A former political rival of Senate President Richard Codey is making a comeback: Joel Shain, the 67-year-old former Mayor of Orange who set records for campaign spending when he challenged Codey in the 1983 Democratic primary, is running for Democratic State Committeeman from Somerset County. Shain spent more than $250,000 in his bid to oust Codey, who was seeking re-election to a second term in the Senate.  Codey won easily.

Shain is the beneficiary of good political connections in Somerset, where he has lived since leaving Essex County politics.  He is the law partner of Peggy Schaffer, who was elected Democratic County Chairman last year.  (Another partner is Peter Tober, a former Assistant Counsel to two GOP Governors, and now one of the Republican members of the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission.)

Codey and Shain were child prodigies in Orange politics.  Shain served as Deputy state Attorney General before his election as Mayor in 1970, at age 29.  Codey was a 27-year-old Democratic District Leader when he won a State Assembly seat in 1973 – defeating George Minish, the son of popular Democratic Congressman Joseph Minish (D-West Orange).  One week later, Shain ran for Essex County Democratic Chairman, but lost by a wide margin to the powerful party boss, Harry Lerner.

Shain was a one-term Mayor (he lost to a Republican named Carmine Capone), but came back to win again in 1980.  Codey moved up to the Senate eight years later when Pat Dodd ran for Governor.  Shain was done in Essex politics in 1984 and went on to serve as the Municipal Attorney in Monroe Township.  Codey became Senate Minority Leader, Senate President, and for fifteen months from 2004 to 2006, as Governor of New Jersey.

While representing a solidly Democratic district, Codey has won some impressive victories.  Besides beating Minish and Shain, he’s successfully fought back some significant Senate primary challenges, including former Assemblywoman Mildred Barry Garvin (D-East Orange) in 1991, and Assemblyman Robert Brown, the Mayor of Orange, in 1993. 

For extreme junkies only: when Assemblyman Eldridge Hawkins (D-East Orange) and tennis great Althea Gibson challenged Senate President Frank “Pat” Dodd (D-West Orange) in 1977, Codey found himself facing a primary in his bid for  re-election to a third term in the State Assembly.  Among the Democrats he beat was Hamlet Goore, who had his fifteen minutes of political fame nearly thirty years later as the live-in boyfriend of state Attorney General Zulima Farber.  His May, 2006 traffic stop in Fairview, where Goore was charged with driving with a suspended license and having an out-of-date registration, led to Farber’s resignation after she intervened with a local police officer after arriving in her state car driven by a State Trooper.

For extreme junkies only, part two: the opportunity for Codey to go to the Assembly in 1973 came as a result of redistricting.  The two Assemblymen from Orange were Eldridge Hawkins and Peter Stewart, but redistricting placed Stewart's hometown, Caldwell, in a neighboring district with three Republican legislators: State Sen. Michael Giuliano (R-Bloomfield), and Assemblymen Carl Orechio (R-Nutley) and Jack Dennis (R-Verona).  Instead, Stewart ran for Essex County Freeholder and won.  Codey ran with Hawkins in what was then the 26th, and in the Watergate landslide of 1973, Democrat Carmen Orechio, the brother of Carl, beat Giuliano and Robert Ruane (D-Bloomfield) unseated Dennis.