Pennacchio holds the line in Hunterdon

This guy is amazing; perhaps he should be getting his campaign tips from Anne Estabrook.

This should be very embarassing for the L-O-S-E-R Zimmer!

When will the GOP Leaders listen; they don't want another L-O-S-E-R!!!

The initial work camp program was started by the rightwing loony - FDR. It was called the Civilian Conservation Corps run by the Army.

Is Medicare that sacred a cow that it can't be REPLACED by something that works?

Stop making things up you Sabrin kiss butt.

So Tricky Dick Zimmer cant win the line in HIS own county. What kind of statement is that for a hometown guy who represented the area in the Assembly, State Senate and Congress forever. Moreover, Kuhl turned out absolutely nothing for this meeting.

The reality is that while these battles for hollow county lines have been going on, Murray Sabrin has been going out with new ideas and trying to meet voters. Perhaps Dick Zimmer oughta go back into retirement and let Murray resurrect the GOP in NJ. If Zimmer can't win his own bucolic county, how is he going to go toe-to-toe with Frank Lautenberg in Bergen or Rob Andrews in Atlantic in November, two counties that should be competitive but where Zimmer has no shot.

I suppose next the NJGOP will go to court and appeal that former Sopranos character Assemblyman Zellman shall run. At least he represented a district with Reagan Democrats.

His manifesto is much more detailed and crazy than pointed out so far. You think it's bad now, wait for the Dem's to do a number on this guy. It will be ugly - and true.

I don't know what the hoopla is over Dick Zimmer. The last time he won any election was 15 years ago, back in 1994. He beat a relatively unknown Democratic candidate. Since then he has lost to Robert Torricelli and Rush Holt. And then he spent the last several years making big bucks as a shill for Warren and Hunterdon Counties trying to stop the Highlands legislation. That's it.

If he is the best the Republicans can do after rifling through a half a dozen or so self-funded candidates, the Goya guy who never came back from a skiing trip and who lives in NY, and a guy who drafted an agenda that reads like it came out of "It Can't Happen Here", ---then I think the Repubs should close up shop and go home.

Zimmer does not even excite his own hometown loyalists, when compared to Pennachio.

Ed Ramirez

Mountaintop is correct. Zimmer could not even win in his own county, even when every effort was made to pave the way to the endorsement.  That also is an important part of this story.

At the special meeting on Wednesday evening, the chairman, Henry Kuhl, announced that the reason there was a necessity for another endorsement vote, was because there had been no "final vote" taken at the last meeting, where Joe had won over Anne Estabrook -- even while she was still a full-fledged, and active candidate.

Henry said that, since there were now three candidates in the race again, that he had called for the vote based on a "legal opinion" he had received. But when Henry was specifically asked who wrote the legal opinion, he curiously said that he had been asked not to divulge that information.

He was also asked why not just take a vote on whether another vote was needed, but he insisted there would have to be another vote. However, Henry was pressed on the point of who wrote the opinion, and why it's author was such a big secret.

Finally, Mark Sheridan stepped forward and conceded he had prepared the opinion. Among other roles, Mark is the campaign lawyer to Dick Zimmer! When Joe Pennachio spoke prior to the vote being taken, he made that point --the connection between Sheridan and Zimmer -- to the assembled county committee members. After having made his pitch for the endorsement, Joee added "Mark Sheridan is Dick Zimmer's lawyer."

So, the counsel for the last-second candidate in the race, secretly issued a "legal opinion" to the county chairman saying that a new vote was required.

The chairman, in turn, refusing to say where the opinion came from, presented it to the county committee as a fait accompli, thereby justifying his call for the new vote. And Dick Zimmer quietly allowed it to happen without uttering a peep.

After the candidates spoke, the ballots were circulated and the vote was taken.

Having looked at the final results, Kuhl at first said that there would need to be a second ballot taken, implying that no one had reached "50% + 1," per the rule.

But he was then specifically asked by several committee members what the actual vote tally was. He looked at the results again, and then announced that there was a reason that the had the "50% + 1" rule.

The vote, he announced, was 34 votes for Joe Pennachio, 30 for Dick Zimmer and 2 for Sabrin.

In other words, there was no need for a second ballot -- Joe Pennachio had indeed received "50% + 1" on that first ballot. Right on the money!  Henry finally took a vote to "acclaim" Joe as the endorsed candidate of Hunterdon, which was adopted without any voiced dissent.

by Trochilus