Christine Whitman

Sherron Rolax, who has a place in New Jersey political trivia as the teenager Gov. Christine Todd Whitman patted down while accompanying State Troopers in a late night patrol in 1996, was killed in a fight in Camden early Saturday morning. The photo surfaced in 2000, after Whitman was nominated to serve as Director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The New York Times has a good story today on New Jersey surpassing Massachusetts as the most liberal state in America.

Just like Massachusetts, New Jersey hasn’t elected a Republican to the United States Senate since 1972.  Only Hawaii and West Virginia have gone longer.  And New Jersey has gone longer without electing a Republican to statewide office than any of the other 49 states; Christie Whitman was the last GOP statewide win, in 1997.  But even so, it’s been fourteen years since a New Jersey Democrat has won re-election to any statewide office – the last one was Frank Lautenberg in 1994.

Republicans have not won a U.S. Senate seat in New Jersey since 1972, and of the eleven candidates nominated since then, only six had previous experience as a general election candidate.  And only two, Robert Franks and Richard Zimmer, had won general election contests that were even slightly competitive.

Right now, it’s looking like a two-candidate race for Mike Ferguson’s seventh district House seat between Senate Minority Leader Leonard Lance and Kate Whitman, the 30-year-old daughter of the former Governor. Somerset Republican insiders say that Assemblyman Peter Biondi and Freeholder Jack Ciattarelli will be the next to announce that they won’t run for Congress.

Union County has two candidates who are, at this point, second tier: Scotch Plains Mayor Martin Marks and former Summit Councilwoman Kelly Hatfield. Both will need to show considerable fundraising success by the end of this month – there won’t be another report due until April – and then one of them will have to dominate the local endorsement game, where Senate Minority Leader Thomas Kean, Jr. is the biggest catch. Kean could stay out of the race – a message to Union County Republicans that Lance and Whitman are stronger candidates – or endorse Lance outright.

Does John Molinelli, in the news this week for vacationing in Italy with State Senator Joseph Coniglio, the target of a federal criminal investigation, and with Bergen County Democratic Organization counsel Dennis Oury, make the list of the five worst county prosecutors in recent years?

Here are four who clearly make our list:

• Two weeks before James Florio was to take office as Governor in 1990, Camden County Prosecutor Samuel Asbell held a news conference to tell a rather spectacular story: he said two gunmen had ambushed him in what became a high speed New Year’s Day gun battle. Asbell said he shot one of the gunmen with a sawed-off shotgun he carried in his car. He said machine gun fire shattered his car windows. But investigators for the State Police found that Asbell had staged the entire event as a last-ditch effort to keep his job under a Democratic Governor. He resigned and entered a mental health facility for treatment.

It not really about the “generous gift beneath the tree” as the Ledger headline suggested in its story about State Senator Ellen Karcher’s property being assessed as farmland (Oct. 5, 2007). It’s really about so much more.

Let’s start with the issue of Farmer Ellen’s incomplete financial disclosure: $515 in annual farm income may not be much to make hay about. That’s all the gross agricultural sales it takes for a seven acre property to qualify for the property tax reduction under State tax law. Still, the legislature’s financial disclosure statement does require all income be reported.