Adam Bushman

Assemblyman Bill Baroni won big in the 14th district state Senate race, blowing out Democrat Seema Singh with 62% of the vote.  He won Hamilton Township with 76%.

But the politically competitive district remains split, with two Democrats capturing seats in the State Assembly.

Incumbent Linda Greenstein prevailed in her bid for a fifth term, and her running mate, labor leader Wayne DeAngelo, outpaced Baroni’s running mates, Tom Goodwin and Adam Bushman.  Greenstein received 28,172 votes; DeAngelo, 25,037; Goodwin, 24,245; and Bushman, 23,663.

Steve Quain, campaign spokesman for state senate candidate Assemblyman Bill Baroni and Assembly candidates Adam Bushman and Tom Goodwin, goes over the ground game in Republican Party HQ in Hamilton.

Republican mayoral candidate John Bencivengo peruses the town's financial assessment statement in Hamilton.

It’s all politics in Hamilton a day before Election Day as Republican mayoral candidate John Bencivengo climbs out of his sport utility vehicle and walks into the office of Council President Dave Kenny.

Kenny and the Republican Council have been fighting with Democratic Mayor Glen Gilmore over the town’s budget and pressuring the mayor through the courts to release details of Hamilton’s financial health before, and not after, the mayoral election.

Moments earlier, the appellate division of the state Superior Court upheld Kenny’s appeal, and denied Gilmore’s motion to issue a stay in the release of the town’s annual financial statement. Now Bencivengo watches as Kenny receives by fax the financial statement from Bowman and Company, the company charged with preparing the information.

District 13 Sen. Joseph Kyrillos huddles with Assemblyman Sam Thompson.Stumping throughout central Jersey on Sunday, Gov. Jon Corzine dismissed the recently formed Common Sense America as a closeted anti-gay group masquerading as a champion of fiscal conservatism.

In defiance of Fair and Clean Elections in the 14th district, the Princeton-based outfit has spent an estimated $450,000-worth of ads against Democratic Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein and by extension, her running mate, labor leader Wayne DeAngelo.

"It’s not going to end up having a major impact," said Corzine, with Greenstein, DeAngelo and state Senate candidate Seema Singh, at his side in Hamilton’s Golden Dawn Diner.

U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg in Monroe today

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg today stood with the district 14 Democratic Assembly candidates in Monroe Township and lambasted a hard right group for continuing to run ads against Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein.

"I talk to John Kerry all the time, and he wishes he fought back harder," Lautenberg said of the failed 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee, who was Swift-boated by a right wing attack machine.

Seema Singh is frustrated. Not with the voters of her district for not hearing her message, but with the press for not promulgating it.

From the beginning of the 14th district State Senate campaign, Bill Baroni has had the upper hand in everything but campaign dollars in this Clean Elections district. All along, he’s had the power of incumbency, along with the reputation of a centrist Republican reformer, while Singh’s campaign has been beset by damaging revelations about her tenure as Ratepayer Advocate, a pending state ethics investigation, and general missteps -- like the comparisons to Baroni and George W. Bush that have backfired and drawn criticism from traditionally Democratic-leaning organizations.

But the press leaves Baroni untouched and is eager to jump on her, said Singh.

“The press has not (been fair),” said Singh. “They have pushed stories that have been initiated by my opponent. But as far as the people of the district are concerned, I’ve received a lot of love, a lot of affection – an outpouring of support.”

In the 14th district, three men are waging a tough campaign for that second Assembly seat behind popular incumbent Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein.

The favorites would appear to be Republican Tom Goodwin and Democrat Wayne DeAngelo. Both men are from Hamilton in Mercer County, the most populous town in the 14th district, where the parties are well organized and where a large number of independent voters go to the polls. 

But the third man in the contest, Goodwin's running mate Adam Bushman, a veteran and former Jamesburg councilman, has racked up some key newspaper endorsements along with the backing of the New Jersey Education Association.

The Home News Tribune split its Assembly endorsements in the 14th district today, picking incumbent Democrat Linda Greenstein and Republican Adam Bushman.

The paper focused mainly on the Greenstein’s record on ethics reform, noting that Greenstein teamed up with Republican state Sen. Peter Inverso to get a piece of pay-to-play legislation that she sponsored in the Assembly put up for a vote in the Senate. Bushman, the paper said, espouses similarly strong ideas on ethics reform and “is the most emphatic among the Assembly contenders in the belief that government at all levels can and must rein in spending and taxes.”

"We’re going to sweep in the 14th," boasts Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce, of the GOP ticket comprised of Assemblyman/State Senate candidate Bill Baroni and running mates Tom Goodwin and Adam Bushman.

The prediction assumes that Baroni’s star power will be sufficient to catapult Goodwin and Bushman into the State Assembly -- a bold statement given Democratic Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein’s reputation as a worker bee, and her four consecutive wins in a politically competitive district.

State Assembly candidate Adam Bushman of Jamesburg chalked up a point last week in the 14th district when he outbid his Republican running mate and his Democratic opponent with an endorsement by the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA).

"I was pretty excited and surprised," said the candidate, a software engineer and former Jamesburg councilman. "I didn’t think I had a good shot at the endorsement. I went in there and told them I thought education is the key to everything."