Best Bets: Grace Spencer or Jay Webber
By Wally EdgeSix of the last eight Governors of New Jersey launched their political careers by serving in the New Jersey State Assembly: William Cahill, Thomas Kean, James Florio, Donald DiFrancesco, James E. McGreevey, and Richard Codey. With that kind of historical precedent, is it possible that one of the 25 freshmen entering the Assembly on Tuesday could wind up living at Drumthwacket someday?
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Read the expanded Wake Up Call, our summary of today’s news media coverage.
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Syndicate
need to go somewhere in-between
But as Wally usually points out, almost nobody ever goes straight from the Legislature to Drumthwacket.
So the real question is where the Freshman class goes next...what's the stepping-stone? There's a limited number of places to go, especially for a guy like Baroni in Mercer or O'Toole in Essex. It will be difficult (if not impossible) to go from State Senate to Governor, so what's their next step??
Assembly to Governor
No sitting Assemblyman has ever been elected Governor, and the last time an incumbent State Senator won the governorship was in 1928. Cahill spent eleven years in Congress; Kean ran for Governor from the Assembly and lost the primary (he was a New Jersey Highway Authority Commissioner and NJN commentator before he won the '81 Governors race); Florio spent 15 years in the House; and McGreevey was the Mayor of Woodbridge, served a term in the State Senate, and ran once and lost. DiFrancesco and Codey were, of course, Senate Presidents, but they never won a statewide campaign.