Ned Parsekian

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg flew up from Washington last night to attend a fundraiser for Hoboken Councilman Peter Cammarano, a good friend – but blew off an invitation to attend another fundraising event the same evening for Newark Mayor Cory Booker.

Former State Sen. Ned J. Parsekian (1921-2008)Ned J. Parsekian, who passed away on Monday, only served two years as a state Senator.

But those who remember Parsekian recall an independent, vocal liberal whose political career was shortened by the circumstances of the times, and whose life-long designs on the governor’s office may have been thwarted by his outspoken stands against politics as usual.

Elected to the Senate in 1965, Parsekian lost just two years later, when an anti-Democratic wave related to voter disenchantment over their creation of a state sales tax and a general feeling of dismay over the Vietnam War knocked many Democrats out of office.

Ned J. Parsekian, a former State Senator from Bergen County, sought the Democratic nomination for Governor in 1969Former State Sen. Ned J. Parsekian, a Bergen County Democrat who ran for Governor in 1969, died on Monday in Sarasota, Florida, according to his law partner, Melvin Solomon. He was 86.

A graduate of New York University and Columbia Law School, and a World War II veteran, Parsekian began his political career serving in the administration of Gov. Robert Meyner. He was Deputy Attorney General, Director of the state Division of Workmen's Compensation, and Director of the Division of Motor Vehicles. He held the post on an acting basis for three years before the Republican-controlled Senate confirmed his nomination.

Parsekian was elected to the State Senate in 1965 and lost re-election in 1967. He briefly considered entering the race to challenge GOP U.S. Sen. Clifford Case in 1966, but declined.  Democrats later decided to back Warren Wilentz, the Middlesex County Prosecutor, for the post.

The national political environment favored the GOP in 1966.  It was the mid-term election of Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson, and the war in Vietnam had just begun to divide the nation.  

In New Jersey, Republican Clifford Case was seeking re-election to a third term in the United States Senate, and even though Democrats scored huge wins a year earlier (Governor Richard Hughes was re-elected in a landslide and Democrats captured both houses of the Legislative), few believed the popular Case, with strong support from traditional Democratic base voters like organized labor, was going to lose.