Dawn Addiego

All eighty seats in the New Jersey General Assembly are up next year, with Democrats in strong shape to keep their majority under a legislative map that creates relatively few competitive races.

Republicans feel that they have a good chance to go on the offensive this year, even if taking control of the Assembly, where Democrats have a 48-32 majority, is an unlikely prospect. Assembly Republican Executive Director Rick Wright thinks the gubernatorial candidacy of U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, one of four Republicans actively exploring a statewide bid, would boost his party’s chances to pick up Assembly seats.

“It all depends on who our gubernatorial candidate is. I know there’s a lot of excitement out there about Chris Christie. If and when he makes his decision, that will help us in our recruiting. We have people out there sitting and saying I want to see what Chris Christie does,” Wright said. “A lot of county chairmen think we have a much better chance of success in gubernatorial and legislative races if Chris Christie is at the top of the ticket.”

State Sen. Diane Allen (R-Edgewater Park) is a possible candidate for Congress against John Adler in 2010

If Republicans can't beat John Adler in 2010, chances are they never will.  If Adler wins a second term, watch for mapmakers to take take some heavily Republican Ocean County towns out of his district when new congressional districts are drawn for the 2012 elections.  Adler scored a 52%-48% victory last week over Republican Christopher Myers for the seat of retiring twelve term U.S. Rep. Jim Saxton -- a seat Democrats hadn't won since 1882.

Republican insiders say that Myers isn't likely to get a second shot at the seat, and that the favorite candidate could be former major league baseball pitcher Al Leiter.  Leiter, a Toms River native who has said he wants to run for office someday, has turned down several offers to seek U.S. Senate and House seats in recent years.  Other possible Adler opponents include: State Sen. Diane Allen (who must first heal wounds in a very fractured Burlington County Republican organization); State Sen. Phil Haines; Assemblywoman Dawn Addiego; Assemblyman Brian Rumpf; and Ocean County Freeholder Jack Kelly, who lost the '08 GOP primary to Myers.

Sources say the leading candidate for Dawn Addiego’s seat on the Burlington County Board of Freeholders is Stacy Jordan, a former Moorestown Council candidate and the daughter of former Freeholder Vincent Farias. Farias did not seek re-election to the Freeholder Board in 2007 and lost a bid for Surrogate in 2006.

Burlington County Republicans will meet on Thursday to screen potential candidates to replace Assemblywoman Dawn Addiego on the Board of Freeholders.  The potential candidates include Lumberton Mayor Pat Delaney, Evesham Councilwoman Debbie Sarcone, and Bordentown Township Committeeman Mark Roselli -- but Republican insiders say that the GOP organization is not necessarily satisfied with the field and may continue to recruit other candidates.  Addiego, who took her Assembly seat last Tuesday, has not yet resigned from the Freeholder board, so there is no urgency to the Burlington GOP’s search for a replacement.

Assemblywoman- elect Dawn Addiego is standing with Glenn Paulsen in the Burlington GOP warAfter feasting on the Democratic Party in the 8th district general election a week ago, Republicans promptly turned on each other in a continuing family fracas that today brought out a normally under-the-radar Republican operative who lit into Assemblywoman-elect Dawn Marie Addiego.

Irritated by Acting Party Chairwoman Dawn Lacy's post Election Day firing of two campaign strategists, Addiego on Tuesday issued a staunch-the-bleeding letter to Evesham Republicans in which she praised the "leadership" of Campaign Chairman Bill Layton and Campaign Manager Chris Russell - and ripped Lacy.

Democratic campaign spokesman Jeff Meyer said early intel shows high voter turnout in key Democratic Party towns in the 8th district: Evesham, Moorestown and Pemberton Township.

"That is a very good sign for us," said Meyer in a brief telephone interview from party headquarters in Mount Laurel.

Republican state Senate candidate Phil Haines remains the favorite against Assemblyman Francis Bodine, who switched parties earlier this year to run for the state Senate in district 8.

John Adams sought a standard for the emerging country's legal system when he represented a British soldier no other lawyer would defend. Adams argued that unless the enemy soldier was subject to a fair trial under the law, there was no sense standing up to the British crown.

"When Adams looked back on his career late in life, he said it was the most honorable thing he had ever done," Justin Loughrey, president of the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey (ACDL-NJ).

Loughrey and others in the New Jersey legal community are invoking the second president of the United States and rising to defend due process against what they see as an attack in the district 8 legislative contest.

Republicans have issued campaign mailers that call into question Democrat Tracy Riley's husband's representation of a man charged in a terror conspiracy plot.

Republicans thought they hit op research gold when they realized that the husband of Democratic Assembly candidate Tracy Riley, running in the suddenly competitive eighth district, was the court-appointed lawyer representing one of the men accused on a plan to kill soldiers at Fort Dix.  In a mailer sent out last week, the three GOP candidates said: "Now, Tracy Riley's Family Law Firm is Defending Him … Tracy Riley: Whose values will she represent in Trenton? Ours? Or theirs?"

The Courier-Post has endorsed Republican Phil Haines for State Senate, and Republican Dawn Addiego and Democrat Tracy Riley for Assembly in the 8th district.  READ

The Republican mail piece hit last week in between two debates in four days, and it was arguably the most controversial of the political season, not just in the contentious 8th district but anywhere.

Next to a photograph of masked men marching in a column with guns at the ready, the words refer to a terror suspect nabbed by authorities in connection with a conspiracy to bomb Fort Dix: "He came to our country illegally. He plotted with other Islamic radicals to kill American soldiers... Now Tracy Riley's family's law firm is defending him... and your tax dollars are paying them to do it."

Riley's husband is the court-appointed attorney representing one of the terror suspects.