Chris Fifis

Democratic campaign spokesman Jeff Meyer said early intel shows high voter turnout in key Democratic Party towns in the 8th district: Evesham, Moorestown and Pemberton Township.

"That is a very good sign for us," said Meyer in a brief telephone interview from party headquarters in Mount Laurel.

Republican state Senate candidate Phil Haines remains the favorite against Assemblyman Francis Bodine, who switched parties earlier this year to run for the state Senate in district 8.

The Republican mail piece hit last week in between two debates in four days, and it was arguably the most controversial of the political season, not just in the contentious 8th district but anywhere.

Next to a photograph of masked men marching in a column with guns at the ready, the words refer to a terror suspect nabbed by authorities in connection with a conspiracy to bomb Fort Dix: "He came to our country illegally. He plotted with other Islamic radicals to kill American soldiers... Now Tracy Riley's family's law firm is defending him... and your tax dollars are paying them to do it."

Riley's husband is the court-appointed attorney representing one of the terror suspects.

All but counted out in his district 8 state Senate race, Assemblyman Fran Bodine threw aside a dysfunctional microphone and declared in a booming voice his willingness to fight Wednesday night in front of an audience of mostly senior citizens in the gated community of Leisuretown in Southampton.

His opposition was subdued, even silent.

Sitting on a lead according to internal GOP polling, confident in the knowledge that the district tilts in his direction, and fearful of being captured by what Republicans said might be the presence of a hidden video camera wielded by the Democrats, GOP state Senate candidate Phil Haines kept his mouth shut.

As 8th District state Senate candidate Assemblyman Fran Bodine and Assembly candidates Tracy Riley and Chris Fifis today called on U.S. Rep. Jim Saxton to protest his support for President George W. Bush’s veto of SCHIP legislation, Burlington County GOP spokesman Chris Russell reissued a press release on behalf of his 8th District Legislative team.

Russell wanted it known that his Senate candidate Phil Haines, and Assembly running mates Dawn Marie Addiego and Scott Rudder, had weeks ago called on Bush to reauthorize the children’s healthcare program.
Addiego rode point on the issue.

Martha Bark may not be running for re-election, but the eighth district Democrats don’t want her to go away. At least not as a campaign issue.

In a press release today, Democratic Assemblyman and State Senate candidate Fran Bodine and his Assembly running mates Chris Fifis and Tracy Riley said that their Republican opponents should either condemn Bark or embrace her. To make the point, Burlington County Democratic Chairman Rick Perr used language reminiscent of President Bush.

The GOP candidates in District 8 were all over Assemblyman Francis Bodine and his running mates on the heels of a Courier-Post news piece yesterday they said depicted Bodine as the ultimate insider and hardly reformer material.

Democrats responded with what they said was damning news about GOP Assembly candidates Dawn Addiego and Scott Rudder - and trotted out the "boss" tag in connection with the Republicans, noting that GOP strongman Glenn Paulsen had been observed "huddling" with Addiego and Rudder at party HQ in Mount Holly.

District 8 Assemblyman Fran Bodine and his running mates, Tracy Riley and Chris Fifis, today threw punches in the direction of outgoing Republican State Sen. Martha Bark, who is under state investigation in connection with money she received from the Burlington County Bridge Commission for part-time work.

In response, County GOP spokesman Chris Russell said the Democrats' press conference amounted to little more than damage control for Bodine.

Each started out in the party of the other, and now 8th district State Senate candidates Fran Bodine and Phil Haines stare from their adopted battlements at the remnants of the parties they left behind - or that left them - or that really no longer exist.

The Burlington County Clerk, Haines, shakes his head in cheery bewilderment as he considers Bodine’s Benedict Arnold moment last spring, when the 14-year Assemblyman stood with U.S. Rep. Bob Andrews to announce his defection from the GOP ranks to run for state Senate as a Democrat.

Bodine likewise won’t accept an invitation to reflect on the Burlington County politicians’ mutual pasts without reminding the listener of Haines’ political beginnings. "I really got to know Phil back when he was a Democrat," muses Bodine.

Eighth district Republicans got Constitutionally banged up when they tried to confront the Democrats over the issue of Tracy Riley’s husband representing a man charged in a terror plot. But now the GOP is crowing over Riley’s departure from her job as a clerk and office manager at her husband's law firm to focus on her campaign for the Assembly.

Riley announced today that she is leaving the firm, and Republicans say it’s because she can’t bear the association.