delegate

Most of New Jersey's Democratic party leadership backed Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination: Getty Images Photo
Democratic National Committeewoman Christine “Roz” Samuels said today that she was dumped from the New Jersey delegation last night because she flipped her support from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama back in February.

Samuels said she was called yesterday morning at 8:00 a.m. by Democratic State Chairman Joseph Cryan, who told her that Essex County Democratic Chairman Phil Thigpen wanted her off the ticket.

“One day notice,” she said. “They called me yesterday morning and told me I was off the ticket. And I said ‘You mean for what I did way in February? This is retaliation for February?’”

Samuels said that she was told she was thrown off the ticket because of her switch. Samuels officially switched to Obama on February 14th – less than one week before two South Jersey super delegates switched – but long before most north Jersey party leaders left the Clinton camp.

Samuels’s replacement will be former Assemblywoman Stephanie Bush-Baskette, who’s also from Essex County.

“I really have to find out what is the time limitation for pulling someone off a ticket. You can’t tell someone that morning the morning of the meeting. Usually you give a two week notice to someone if you’re going to fire them from the job,” she said, adding that she has run two recent successful Obama events in Montclair. “It’s just a vindictive thing because I had a couple good meetings, and I think (Thigpen) feels that way because he didn’t do it first.”

Senate President Richard Codey lost his first election of his 35-year political career on Tuesday when he was defeated in a race for delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Codey, who was listed on the ballot with John Edwards, received just 746 votes. In Codey’s delegate district, Barack Obama (who had Codey’s support) beat Hillary Clinton by just 732 votes – 28,777 to 28,045. For the record, eight Democrats, including the Rev. Reginald Jackson, Essex County Freeholder Patricia Sebold, and Democratic strategist Phil Alagia can say they once beat Codey in a Democratic primary.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman John Adler, who is seeking to become the first Democrat to win a House seat from the third district since 1882, hasn’t lost an election in nearly eighteen years; he ran unsuccessfully for Congress against Jim Saxton in 1990, and then ousted a veteran GOP State Senator a year later. His campaign for the Saxton seat is viewed as one of the most competitive congressional races in the nation this year.