Harrison Williams

Republicans have held the 7th district House seat since 1956, when Florence Dwyer, an Assemblywoman from Elizabeth, unseated two-term Democrat Harrison Williams.  Matthew Rinaldo, who passed away on Monday at age 77, occupied the seat for twenty years.  Now, with the retirement of Michael Ferguson, Democrats are slightly favored to win the seat in a contest between Assemblywoman Linda Stender and her GOP rival, State Sen. Leonard Lance.

Rinaldo began his political career in 1962 when he won a seat on the Union County Board of Freeholders.  When he ran for re-election to a second term in 1965, he lost narrowly (the initial tally, before the recount, said just one vote) to Arthur Fried, a Democratic Councilman from Westfield.  He came back two years later, defeating State Sen. Mildred Barry Hughes, the first woman to serve in the New Jersey State Senate, by 10,657 votes -- a 57%-43% margin.  When he ran for re-election in 1971, Rinaldo ran more than 16,000 votes ahead of his running mate, Frank McDermott, and more than 25,000 votes ahead of his nearest Democratic rival.

The two New Jersey House seats most clearly in play next year are the two that have been held by the Republicans for the longest period of time: Democrats have not won the seat now held by Jim Saxton for 126 years, and Mike Ferguson’s district has not elected a Democrat since 1954.

In New Jersey, incumbent United States Senators have rarely faced competitive primary challenges, and the only incumbent Senator to lose a primary was Clifford Case, a four-term Republican who lost 50.7%-49.3% to conservative Jeffrey Bell, a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan’s 1976 presidential campaign.  Case had faced primary challenges from the right before: Robert Morris, who had been Chief Counsel for Senate Internal Security Subcommittee headed by Joseph McCarthy, won 33% in 1960; and James Walter Ralph, a Bergen County physician, received 30% in 1972.

In 1958, Democrat Alexander Feinberg and former GOP Assemblyman William Cahill faced off in the old first district for the seat of Republican Charles Wolverton, who was retiring after 32 years in Congress. A Democratic year nationally, Cahill held on for a 1,829 vote victory, 50%-49%. Had Cahill lost his congressional race, he probably would not have won election as Governor in 1969.  (Feinberg, a Cherry Hill Democrat, became friends with the Senate candidate that year, Harrison Williams.  More than two decades later, when Williams was indicted in the Abscam scandal, Feinberg was a co-defendant.)

The other race was a 1953 Special Election for the seat of Republican Clifford Case, who had resigned during his ninth year in office to become the president of The Fund for the Republic. (Case returned to politics one year later to win the U.S. Senate seat of retiring freshman GOP Senator Robert Hendrickson). Most observers at the time expected the Republican, Plainfield Mayor George Hetfield, to easily win Case's congressional seat. His Democratic opponent was a 33-year-old lawyer and World War II veteran who had already lost races for State Assembly in 1951 and Plainfield City Councilman in 1952, Harrison Williams.

Bob Decheine probably wouldn’t know how to get from Haworth to Hawthorne, but he’s very much in control of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in New Jersey. His power comes from his day job as Chief of Staff to Congressman Steven Rothman, who has emerged as the leader of the state Obama campaign. And Rothman’s lead in a PolitickerNJ.com online poll of which New Jersey Democrat has the most political power today appears to be the result of Obama’s surge as a national candidate.

New Jersey has a medium-sized controversy brewing: the naming of Route 23 after Robert Roe, who represented New Jersey in Congress from 1969 to 1993 and served as Chairman of the House Public Works and Transportation Committee. The Legislature almost unanimously (only Ellen Karcher voted no) approved the bill last year, and Governor Jon Corzine signed it – but now people are paying attention because of a complaint levied by a Morris County man whose wife and daughter were seriously injured in a 1993 car accident involving Roe, who was driving drunk at the time (a breathalyzer showed him at .17, well beyond the .10 legal limit). Roe entered into a plea bargain with prosecutors to avoid serious charges, and paid the family a settlement of more than $500,000.

Left to right: Clifford Case, Harrison Williams and Frank Lautenberg
Frank Lautenberg, 84, never ran for office until he was 58-years-old and has never won more than 55% of the vote in a statewide election, but if he wins a fifth term later this year, he would become the longest serving United States Senator in New Jersey history.

The last time Leonard Lance ran for Congress was in 1996; he sought an open seat when Richard Zimmer ran for the United States Senate. In that GOP primary, Somerset County Freeholder Michael Pappas defeated Senate Majority Leader John Bennett by a 38%-34%, with Lance, then an Assemblyman, won 26%.

But Lance’s popularity among Republicans in Hunterdon County is undeniable, and Hunterdon is a key player in a seventh district Republican primary. And Union County, which has elected a Republican to Congress since Florence Dwyer ousted Harrison Williams in 1956, no longer dominates the district.

In 2006, 38% of Mike Ferguson’s primary votes came out of Hunterdon, while 29% came from Somerset, 27% from Union, and 6% from Middlesex.

In New Jersey, public officials accused of accepting bribes usually don't resign before a resolution of their case.  Look at Harrison Williams, who served in the United States Senate from 1959 to 1982.  He was accused of taking a bribe from an FBI agent posing as an arab sheik in February 1980.  He was indicted in October 1980, and convicted in March 1981.  But he remained in office, maintaining his innocence, while appealing the verdict.  He didn't resign until the Senate was about to expel him in March 1982.

A factoid courtesy of Hotline:

SENATE IS SEXY, HOUSE IS MONEY?
How many more House members have resigned over the past 25 years due to financial scandals compared to those who left because of sexual indelicacies? By comparison, Senate resignation watches only seem to happen because of sex scandals, with bribery allegations much less likely to stick. Indeed, the last senator to resign over a non-sex scandal was Harrison Williams (D-NJ) in '82.