New Hampshire

FULL SENATE APPROVES CODEY, KARCHER BILL TO MOVE NEW JERSEY TO CENTER OF PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION DEBATE

TRENTON -- By a vote of 33 to 5, the full Senate today approved bill S-2193, sponsored by Senate President Richard J. Codey (D-Essex), which would move New Jersey's presidential primary up to early February and give state voters the long-awaited opportunity to help determine the nation's next presidential candidates.

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GOVENOR CORZINE APPOINTS DR. E. SUSAN HODGSON AS CHILD ADVOCATE

TRENTON

- Governor Jon S. Corzine today announced the appointment of Dr. E. Susan Hodgson as New Jersey’s Child Advocate. Read More >

The Democratic U.S. Senate primary in Connecticut next week has some similarities to New Jersey's GOP U.S. Senate primary of 1978. Conservatives had almost captured the Republican presidential nomination in 1976, when Ronald Reagan came close to defeating an incumbent President; two years later, Jeffrey Bell, a conservative who had been Reagan's speechwriter, challenged four-term incumbent Senator Clifford Case. Case was enormously popular among independents and even Democrats, but was viewed as too liberal for his own party and Bell beat him in the primary. Ned Lamont's challenge to Senator Joseph Lieberman comes two years after progressive Democrats believed they had secured the presidential nomination for Howard Dean.

Lieberman says he will run as an Independent if he loses the Democratic primary, which raises an interesting question for New Jersey political junkies: how would Case, who won re-election in 1972 by over 700,000 votes, have fared in the 1978 general election had he run as an Independent against Bell and Democrat Bill Bradley?

For extreme political junkies, here's the list of incumbent U.S. Senators to lose primaries over the last sixty years:

2002: Bob Smith lost to John Sununu, New Hampshire
1996: Sheila Fraham lost to Sam Brownback, Kansas
1992: Alan Dixon lost to Carol Mosely Braun, Illinois
1980: Jacob Javits lost to Al D'Amato, New York
1989: Mike Gravel lost to Clark Gruening, Alaska (Frank Murkowksi won seat)
1980: Donald Stewart lost to Jim Folsom, Alabama (Jeremiah Denton won seat)
1980: Richard Stone lost to Bill Gunter, Florida (Paula Hawkins won seat)
1978: Clifford Case lost to Jeff Bell, New Jersey (Bill Bradley won seat)
1978: Maryon Allen lost to Donald Stewart, Alabama
1978: Paul Hatfield lost to Max Baucus, Montana
1974: J. William Fullbright lost to Dale Bumpers, Arkansas
1974: Howard Metzenbaum lost to John Glenn, Ohio
1972: David Gambrell lost to Sam Nunn, Georgia
1972: Everett Jordan lost to Nick Galifanakis, North Carolina (Jesse Helms won seat)
1970: Ralph Yarborough lost to Lloyd Bentsen, Texas
1968: Edward Long lost to Thomas Eagleton, Missouri
1968: Ernest Gruening lost to Mike Gravel, Alaska
1968: Thomas Kuchel lost to Max Rafferty, California (Alan Cranston won seat)
1968: Frank Lausche lost to John Gilligan, Ohio (William Saxbe won seat)
1966: Donald Russell lost to Ernest Hollings, South Carolina
1966: Ross Bass lost to Frank Clement, Tennessee (Howard Baker won seat)
1966: Willis Robertson lost to William Spong, Virginia
1964: Howard Edmonston lost to Fred Harris, Oklahoma
1962: Maurice Murphy lost to Perkins Bass, New Hampshire (Thomas McIntyre won seat)
1954: Robert Upton lost to Norris Cotton, New Hampshire
1954: Alton Lennon lost to William Scott, North Carolina
1952: Ralph Brewster lost to William Payne, Maine
1952: Kenneth McKellar lost to Albert Gore, Tennessee
1950: Claude Pepper lost to William Smathers, Florida
1950: Glen Taylor lost to Worth Clark, Idaho (Herman Welker won seat)
1950: Frank Porter Graham lost to Willis Smith, North Carolina
1950: Elmer Thomas lost to Mike Monroney, Oklahoma
1950: Chandler Gurney lost to Francis Case, South Dakota
1948: Thomas Stewart lost to Estes Kefauver, Tennessee
1946: Charles Gossett lost to George Donart, Idaho (Henry Dworshak won seat)
1946: George Radcliffe lost to Herbert O'Conor, Maryland
1946: Henrik Shipstead lost to Edward Thye, Minnesota
1946: Burton Wheeler lost to Leif Erickson, Montana (Zales Ecton won seat)
1946: Robert LaFollette lost to Joseph McCarthy

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The Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee voted last weekend to hold caucuses in Iowa and Nevada, followed by primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina, before other states would be permitted to begin the selection of delegates on February 5, 2008.. That means that the New Jersey presidential primary -- moved up to February 26, 2008 to assure some ability for Garden State voters to influence the nomination process -- could wind up being irrelevant anyway. If the national Democrats have their way, New Jersey will be in the fourth week of post New Hampshire/South Carolina primaries, and six weeks after Iowa.

In the last two presidential campaigns, the race ended not long after Iowa. Richard Gephardt dropped out on January 20, Joseph Lieberman on February 4, (after losing badly in New Hampshire on January 27), Wesley Clark (he won only in Oklahoma on February 3) on February 11, and Howard Dean on February 20 (three days after losing his fifteenth primary and caucus). Only John Edwards made it to March 3 -- Super Tuesday -- though his campaign had collapsed the week before with losses in Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin.

In 2000, Democrat Bill Bradley and Republican John McCain, the two principal competitors to Albert Gore and George W. Bush, respectively, withdrew on March 9 -- 45 days after Iowa. the 2000 campaign of Steve Forbes lasted only sixteen days. New Jersey political insiders, especially the dyed-in-the-wool junkies, have been pushing for an early primary for years. It would be a cruel joke indeed if New Jersey went through the trouble and expense of moving their primary up fifteen weeks and then found that the state was to continue a traditional of national irrelevance

The idea of an early primary made sense if New Jersey wants to play a greater role in nominating a presidential candidate instead of just financing one. In his 2005 State of the State Address, then Governor Richard Codey said: "I am tired of watching small states like Iowa and New Hampshire pick our presidential candidates."

Now Codey, the Senate President, and Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts, must decide if they will move up the New Jersey primary by a few weeks. Surely Governor Jon Corzine will have something to say about that: it is no secret that Corzine harbors some fairly intense national ambitions, and he might not want to have his home state pick sides early if he hopes to emerge as a Vice Presidential candidate that summer.

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National Republicans scored a major political victory in California's 50th congressional district when they won a Special Election to fill the vacancy caused by Duke Cunningham's resignation. Some of the credit for the win is going to the Republican National Committee's 72-Hour Program, their voter turnout model. An RNC memo says that the program generated over 182,000 direct voter contacts, and since their team arrived in the district, they reversed a Democratic lead in returned absentee ballots by more than 50%.

The Director of the RNC 72-Hour Program is a New Jerseyan, Bill Stepien, who not coincidentally made the PoliticsNJ.com Rising Stars list in 2001 and the Best Operatives list in 2003. Stepien, who spent the last two weeks in Southern California, started out in politics as a volunteer on Anthony Bucco's successful State Senate race in 1997 against incumbent Gordon MacInnes (that's the last time Republicans ousted a Democratic Senator) and was the Campaign Manager for Bill Baroni's winning State Assembly race in 2003 against incumbent Gary Guear. He joined the RNC after running the Bush/Cheney field operation in New Hampshire in 2004. Stepien's boss is another New Jerseyan, Michael DuHaime, who is now the RNC Political Director.

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New Jerseyan Steve Forbes says he is spending two days in New Hampshire this week to push his flat tax agenda and sign copies of his new book, "Flat Tax Revolution" -- and not to begin planting the seeds for a third presidential campaign in 2008. Forbes spent more than $75 million of his own fortune in unsuccessful bids for the Republican nomination for President in 1996 and 2000. Forbes campaigned for Bret Schundler in the recent New Jersey gubernatorial primary, and led attacks against Doug Forrester's "30-in-3" tax plan.

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