Diane Allen

State Sen. Diane Allen won't run for U.S. SenateDespite calls from party leaders urging her to run, Republican state Sen. Diane Allen will not make a bid for U.S. Senate.

Allen, who’s been sick with pneumonia for two months, said that she’s not well enough to forge ahead with a statewide campaign.

“If I were 100% well and on my game I might have stepped in the day that Anne (Estabrook) stepped out, because I had been a strong supporter of hers, but there’s really no use in speculating,” she said. “I’m still sick and it’s going to be a long while before I’m back in shape.”

State Sen. Joe Pennacchio never had the enthusiastic support of most party leaders for his U.S. Senate candidacy. But just as it seemed like they had no option other than to coalesce around him instead of rival candidate Murray Sabrin, the latest turn in the campaign has caused several leaders to make one last push for a Senate candidate.

The reemergence of Pennacchio’s controversial 1991 booklet yesterday as a campaign issue has worried the party leaders who were already reluctant to get on board with Pennacchio, and they have renewed their efforts to find an alternate candidate. Although the existence of the book was known to many party leaders, many had not read it until Sabrin released it yesterday. Some fear that incumbent Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg will have a field day with the material, leading to a Lautenberg landslide that could spell trouble for their down-ballot candidates.

“We’re still fishing, we just haven’t gotten a fish,” said one Republican official who wished to remain anonymous. “We’ve got a lot of bait in the water.”

It’s a valid concern, according to Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murray.

“This is how Democrats win landslide elections in New Jersey -- by having the ability to paint the Republicans as ideologically out of touch with the state,” said Murray, who noted two statewide races in which Democrats were able to successfully portray their opponents as ideologues: Democrat Jim Florio did against Republican Jim Courter in 1989, as did Democrat Jim McGreevey against Republican Brett Schundler in 2001.

Newly-elected Burlington County GOP Chairman Bill Layton
In an act that became inevitable when a state superior court judge abruptly reversed his decision from earlier in the week, the Burlington County Republican Committee elected Bill Layton as their new party chairman at a special meeting on Saturday.

The unanimous vote proclaimed party unity, but the mood in the room bore an undercurrent of anxiety, which the new chairman attempted to dissipate in his acceptance speech.

"Friends," Layton told the crowd of 300 in the Wyndham Hotel in Mount Laurel, "families fight. They fight all the time. But they leave their house unified, and they go and fight with the neighbors."

As veteran state legislator Diane Allen’s congressional star descended over the 3rd district, an opposing faction in her party inch by inch unveiled what they believe is the tantalizing candidacy of newcomer Christopher Myers, a decorated Gulf War veteran and vice president at Lockheed Martin.

"A real man's man," said an early supporter.

The popular Allen just endured a six-month long re-election campaign in which she fairly beat up the opposition by a 12% margin, but also expended energy and capital in a losing effort to pull in a pair of Assembly running mates.

Diane Allen won't run for CongressState Sen. Diane Allen says she will not be a candidate for Jim Saxton’s open House seat next year.

“Now is not the time in my life that I feel prepared to again fight a Democrat opponent as well as a rogue faction of the Burlington County Republican Party simultaneously,” Allen said .

It's a saga as old as Saul versus David, Red Cloud versus Crazy Horse. The scrappy old boss has to go out and try to defend his turf against the brazen young challenger bucking to be if not his successor exactly, then the leader of a new breed.

That's the way it is in Burlington County, where 36-year old Dawn Lacy, acting chair of the Republican Party, is facing Glenn Paulsen, 60, the party's former chair and enduring craggy-faced poster boy for GOP power. 

When Lacy threw Paulsen's surrogates out of party headquarters the day after the election on Nov. 6th, the boss went into attack mode and promptly started stirring up opposition to the bright-eyed young politico whom he'd initially brought into the fold to head up the party's youth recruitment efforts.

State Sen. Diane Allen has stopped short of entering the race for Jim Saxton’s House seat, or even announcing an exploratory committee.  Instead, she has formed a Congressional Campaign Advisory Committee as a prelude to a bid for the open third district House seat.  Burlington County Sheriff Jean Stanfield and Freeholders Bill Haines and Jim Wujcik will serve on the committee.

Rev. Aubrey Fenton, a Republican Freeholder from Burlington County, with Rep. Jim SaxtonRev. Aubrey Fenton was as shocked as any other Republican to hear that 12-term Rep. Jim Saxton’s would not seek re-election. But after getting the news on Friday, Fenton shut himself off from the political world as he typically does on weekends, taking sanctuary in his church to focus on his Sunday sermon.

So it wasn’t until Monday that the 37-year-old Burlington County Freeholder saw published reports that Burlington County GOP leader Glenn Paulsen, who’s feuding with potential congressional candidate state Sen. Diane Allen -- the early favorite for the Republican nomination – was talking up a potential Fenton run.

Paulsen later told PolitickerNJ.com that Republicans ought to look into supporting the candidacy of Fenton, an African-American, as an opportunity for the national party to reach out to minority voters. Plus, he said, Fenton is more socially conservative than Allen, meshing with the national party’s stance on issues like abortion and gay marriage more than the moderate Allen.

The Rothenberg Political Report says New Jersey's 3rd district congressional seat is a toss-upU.S. Rep. Jim Saxton’s pending retirement has dramatically increased the likelihood of Democrats picking up the seat, according to Washington-based political analyst Stuart Rothenberg.

On Friday, after Saxton’s announcement, Rothenberg reclassified the status of the third district Congressional seat in his Political Report from “Republican favored,” the least vulnerable category for competitive races, to “pure toss-up,” the most vulnerable. But that could all change depending on who the Republicans recruit to face off against state Sen. John Adler.

“We thought it was going to be a race. We were waiting to see what kind of campaign Adler ran and what the environment was going to be,” said Rothenberg. “It didn’t seem like the best of opportunities, but now it’s turned out to be what could be one of the dozen best opportunities in the country depending upon Republican recruiting.”

The field of potential Republican candidates to replace Jim Saxton next year is still large, but a few of the names first floated have removed themselves from consideration.