Guy Gregg

Absorbing some former backers of Fred Thompson and at least one defector from the camp of Rudy Giuliani, Sen. Joseph Kyrillos, state chairman of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, today assembled an official, updated team of Romney backers at a breakfast in Parsippany.

Following the post South Carolina departure of Sen. Fred Thompson from the presidential race, former Assemblyman Guy Gregg, state director of the Thompson campaign in New Jersey, announced today he would throw his support behind Mitt Romney.

"We need a businessman and someone with a fresher perspective outside of Washington," said Gregg, who will recommend to others in the Thompson camp that they back Romney.

If Republicans lose any seats in the State Assembly in the November mid-term election, look for Peter Biondi to challenge Alex DeCroce for Minority Leader. The 65-year-old Biondi, a five-term Assemblyman from Somerset County, ousted Guy Gregg from the #2 leadership post, Republican Conference Chairman, after the 2005 election.

The race for Executive Director of the Senate Republicans is already taking shape, with at least two potential candidates already calling Senators seeking support for the $140,730-a-year staff post.  Rick England, a longtime Senate aide and political strategist who has been around the upper house since Donald DiFrancesco ran the Senate, and lame duck Assemblyman Guy Gregg are both campaigning for the job currently held by John Samerjan.

Formr Republican State Chairman Virginia Littell, the wife of State Senator Robert Littell and the mother of Assemblywoman Alison McHose, wants the state GOP to "ban employees of the NJGOP from seeking outside campaign consulting contracts with candidates or committees active in Republican primaries."

During this cycle, the Republican State Committee Communications and Research Director, Todd Riffle, was also a consultant to Guy Gregg's campaign for State Senate. At the time Riffle was first paid, Gregg's opponent was Littell, a 36-year incumbent.

It hurts. It hurts to go through it and it hurts to sit there and look at it when it goes down.

But there they were in Trenton, the lately vanquished making an effort in that stately chamber to appear at the office as usual.

Come New Year they’d be out the door.

There was Assemblyman Sal Vega, beaten by Assemblyman Brian Stack at the polls, sitting next to none other than Stack, who mostly stayed occupied on a cell-phone in the lead up Monday’s session.

"I was here working last Thursday, right after the election," said Vega

Assemblyman Guy Gregg, who lost Tuesday night in his State Senate bid, said he stayed away from this morning’s Sussex County GOP unity breakfast because the 24th legislative district includes three counties, and any appeal to unity should include tri-party representation.

Admittedly disappointed, angry and shocked, he also didn’t want to remount the stage and be forced to emote publicly so soon after a bitter loss.

"I gave my concession speech Tuesday and I didn’t feel compelled to give it again," said the 13-year Assemblyman from Morris County.

Republican State Senate nominee Steve Oroho welcomes GOP State Chairman Tom Wilson to Sussex County.

Defeated district 24 Senate candidate, Assemblyman Guy Gregg, was listed among the critically wounded Friday, unable to make reveille at the Sussex County Republican Party Unity Breakfast in the Lafayette House.

But there was his conqueror, Steve Oroho, serving coffee, making weight jokes and finally urging his party to put the campaign battle in perspective as he choked up while reading a letter from his kid brother, who’s a Black Hawk Helicopter pilot stationed in Kirkuk, Iraq.

While not exactly Hudson County, the race for the Republican State Senate nomination in the 24th district in Sussex and Morris counties was indeed brutal.  The contest for veteran Bob Littell's seat attracted two candidates: seven-term Assemblyman Guy Gregg, and Steven Oroho, a Sussex County Freeholder and Littell's handpicked successor.  Gregg was viewed as the front-runner, but he had expected to run against Littell's forty-year legislative record and not watch the race become a referendum on his own votes in Trenton.

Sussex County Freeholder Steve Oroho, a candidate for the GOP State Senate nomination in the 24th district
Long stretches go by in this northwestern district where there are no colorful campaign signs, only acts of nature and traces of people in the form of pickup trucks, narrow roads, fenced-in fields, and, in the distance, new luxury homes.

Whatever invasive species may upset the old order of these 31 towns and the land in-between that comprise the 24th district, the majority Republicans here hold fast to four principles that in the right hands are pure political wampum: 2nd Amendment rights, pro-life values, private property rights and low taxes.

They have a name for themselves.

"Mountain men," says Assemblyman Guy Gregg, eyes twinkling with mischievous delight in the region’s mythology, elusive to anyone who hasn’t seen how swiftly the shadows of cloud cover change the hills here.

Gregg's in a far rightward leaning fight to represent the 24th in the state Senate with Sussex County Freeholder Steve Oroho.