2011 Power List and Year in Review - PolitickerNJ.com

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PolitickerNJ.com year in review 2011 Best campaigns Dick Codey New Jersey’s Comeback Kid Banished into back bench oblivion by George Norcross and Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo in 2009, Codey faced the unpleasant possibility that his enemies would redistrict him into an unwinnable legislative district. Well, they couldn’t quite pull that off, but they did manage to slot Codey in a more competitive district that included a chunk of GOP-dominant Morris County. With $2 million in the bank, Codey started taking his swings early, sending flowers to Morris County Democratic Chairman Lou Candura, blanketing Morris with Codey signs, then proceeding to schmooze Republicans, removing whole sections of GOP infrastructure from his opponent. His challenger, by the way, was supposed to have been a millionaire lawyer designed to drain the political life out of Codey with his own bank account. When that guy lost, the GOP had a Tea Partier on their hands who drove the establishment into Codey’s open arms. Codey ultimately pulled in more than 60 percent of the vote. The prospective 2013 gubernatorial challenger put the perfect ending on his campaign courtesy of the Star-Ledger when the front page headline dealt the night’s loss to Chris Christie above a four column photo of a beaming Codey. Linda Greenstein Planet Greenstein The 14th Legislative District is now officially Greenstein’s shooting gallery. For the second year in a row, the Plainsboro product defeated a serious challenger, in both cases a Hamilton brand. After capsizing Tom Goodwin out of office last year, Greenstein easily defeated Richard Kanka in November, even more impressively recording more votes than her GOP challenger in his hometown of Hamilton. Part of the key to Greenstein’s victory was her hairtrigger response to Kanka’s campaign launch by wrenching the backing of Kanka’s own plumbers and pipefitters local onto her side before the challenger could appeal to his union brothers. Felix Roque The Consummate Underdog Only in New Jersey can an Army colonel be laughed at as a political outsider and no-hoper because he spent time in uniform defending his country rather than strutting around the local scene in shark skin suits and wing tips. But fed up with high taxes, the public loved Roque’s American success story and took pride in a kid from Cuba growing up in West New York and becoming not just an officer but a medical doctor. When the opposition tried to write him off as an elitist, Roque good-naturedly played along, promising to keep the Bentley parked and campaigning in a Smart car. Part of the doctor’s success came from sheer persistence in the face of public attacks. Fearing reprisals in the event that incumbent Mayor Sal Vega won re-election, many of Roque’s supporters stayed underground while the candidate held low-key fundraisers and delighted in the company of former heavyweight champ Larry Holmes. Carlstadt Mayor William Roseman’s Re-election It’s a fairly competitive town to begin with, yet Republican Mayor William Roseman not only won re-election, but pulled his team in with him despite battling official misconduct charges for keeping his ex-wife on the borough’s health plan for years after the couple’s divorce. Bill Musto and Anthony Suarez would have been proud. 3rd District Senate Challenger Mike Mulligan Democrats told Mulligan that if he wanted to pick a fight with state Senate President Steve Sweeney he ought to have at least a bazooka in the trunk of his car. The Tea Party-endorsed LD3 attorney had very few resources to compete against a senator with the second heftiest campaign war chest in the state. But Mulligan worked the press, citing Cumberland as the number one county where residents complain about being unhappy, the unpopularity of President Barack Obama, Gov. Chris Christie’s positive poll numbers, the implosion of former Cumberland County Democratic Chairman Lou Magazine, and the prospect of off-year, low voter turnout. He eked out enough clippings and stayed focused enough throughout not to make it a dogfight exactly but to come closer to unseating the senate president than most expected: 20,197 to 25,299 votes. Quote of the Year Runner-Up ‘You have a bunch of legislators and lobbyists packed together drinking at 11 in the morning. What could go wrong?’ —Anonymous political insider on why he doesn’t ride the Chamber train 36 PolitickerNJ
PolitickerNJ.com year in review 2011 Worst campaigns Phil Mitsch for Senate For future campaigns: You know something has gone terribly, terribly wrong when your candidate keeps repeating the words “whore in the bedroom.” In another example of the horrors of Twitter ending up in the wrong hands, the hapless Mitsch dispensed an overcooked Jerry Hall quote as if it were Confucian profundity, then spent the rest of his 15 minutes trying to explain while simultaneously imploding. It was very ugly by the end, with the candidate attempting a mea culpa, which the Camden County Republican Organization interpreted as too self-serving before publicly cutting loose the flailing 6th District challenger. Of course, following the pummeling from his own party, incumbent state Sen. Jim Beach buried an already heavily lumped up Mitsch on Election Day, 62.1% to 37.9%. The Public Sector worker effort to stop Christie They brought armies equipped with bullhorns and State Street presence to confront Christie’s proposed reform of pensions and health benefits. Ultimately though, the unions failed to capture the imagination and sympathies of the general public. With the leaders of the collective bargaining movement doing their best Abbie Hoffman acts, desperately reaching back into a 1960s grab bag of angry oratory, the protests did little to sway the vote. Christie must have been reveling with political pals as the angry rhetoric ramped up, culminating in a dreadful derailment when CWA leader Chris Shelton likened the governor to Hitler. 16th District Democrats The Democrats put themselves in striking distance to have a shot at winning an assembly seat here in the newly configured 16th. They may yet succeed in a special election next year. The candidates worked hard enough and stayed aggressive throughout to come close to meriting consideration for a runners-up slot for campaign of the year. But it was a low-blow mailer targeting Assemblyman Pete Biondi’s attendance record that lands them on this list. As the ad surfaced, Biondi told reporters he was battling cancer. Somerset County Democratic Chairwoman Peg Schaffer claimed she had no idea Biondi was ill, but defended the move once she found out. “He has my empathy but I still think it’s an issue for the voters to deal with,” Schaffer told the Courier News. “I don’t want to sound callous, but it’s a sad fact of reality. The voters elected him to do the job (and) I think the voter gets to decide.” Voters did decide, electing Biondi to another term. The Republican died three days after the election.. Delany for Assembly State Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-37) used to offer wise advice about keeping spouses away from political campaigns. She learned the hard way, apparently, with a husband who couldn’t stand to see the feisty Jewish grandmother attacked. More applicable words could never have been more welcome than in the 8th Legislative District, where Pat Delany couldn’t keep his wife away from a computer keypad. He was already out of the race, hobbled in part by family woes and very likely thankful to have the debacle behind him when news surfaced that the Mrs. sent a racially tinged email to Carl Lewis. It dragged Delany into an unforgiving maelstrom went national. Sullivan for Senate In the waning days of redistricting, Essex Fells Councilman William Sullivan might have had the same drape over himself the military reserves for secret hi-tech weapons. He had all the makings of the perfect candidate to challenge Dick Codey in a newly rearranged 27th District: local success, establishment backing, a big thumbs up from the front office, and – huge plus coming up – money. Republicans loved that matchup. Maybe Sullivan couldn’t beat Codey – not yet. But a credible effort could position the polished attorney for a 2013 run. The trouble is Sullivan relied on the establishment to put together his primary campaign in precisely that district where the most energized Tea Party contender in the state happened to reside. Sullivan blew off debates, put the primary on cruise control, didn’t return calls from low level operatives – or the press - and lost the primary to William Eames. It was a rather embarrassing establishment Republican episode that had Codey appropriately cackling. PolitickerNJ 37
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2011 Power List and Year in Review - PolitickerNJ.com

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