Pre-Pallone

Before there was Frank Pallone and James Howard, the Congressman from Monmouth County was James Auchincloss, a Republican who was 50-years-old when he walked away from his seat on the New York Stock Exchange to begin concentrate full time on his political career. He had been elected to the Rumson Borough Council in 1930 and won his first of three terms as Mayor in 1937. He challenged five-term Democratic Congressman William Sutphin in 1942 and won easily.

Over the next 22 years, he assembled a fairly conservative voting record in Congress and became popular with voters in Monmouth and Ocean counties -- running ahead of Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. He retired in 1964, at age 79; the Democratic landslide that year helped Howard, an elementary school principal and political newcomer, narrowly upset the Republican candidate in the race for Auchincloss' open seat. Auchincloss, whose cousins included Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' stepfather, spent his retirment in Washington, where he died in 1976 at age 91.

The man who was supposed to succeed Auchincloss was another wealthy conservative, Marcus Daly, whose uncle had founded Anaconda Copper. Daly had held a diplomatic post in the Eisenhower administration -- he was in charge of resettling several hundred thousand European refugees -- and then won a seat on the Monmouth County Board of Freeholders in 1963.

As a Freeholder, Daly sought to stop the county from making welfare payments to women who had children out of wedlock, and wanted to see those women prosecuted. Eventually he backed down when Governor Richard Hughes said that his actions could result in a huge loss of federal aid. Lyndon Johson defeated Barry Goldwater in the Monmouth/Ocean district with 61% of the vote, and Daly lost to Howard by less than 2,000 votes.

Instead of a rematch with Howard in 1966, Daly ran for re-election as Freeholder and won. He won the GOP nomination for Congress in 1968, but was forced to drop out the race in early September when he was diagnosed with cancer. He died the following year at the age of 60.