Frederick Lacey

One of the classic stories of the New Jersey Legislature in 1968 were allegations that a Newark Assemblyman wanted to cancel a hearing on organized crime under pressure from a "lobbyist" representing Geraldo (Jerry) Catena, one of the state's most powerful mob bosses.

Senate Law and Public Safety Committee Chairman Joseph Woodcock held a news conference in December 1968 to say that his aide was told by Assembly Law and Public Safety Committee Chairman Richard Fiore that he was being pressured by Catena to stop legislative proposals to create the State Commission of Investigation, and to legalize wiretapping, and to permit certain witnesses to receive immunity from prosecution.

Claire Curran Johnson, a former New York Mirror crime reporter who worked for Woodcock, told investigators for the state Attorney General's office that Fiore, a 36-year-old substitute teacher and Recreation Director for the Newark Board of Education, claimed he wanted to head the Assembly panel "to stop these kind of things." "There is a lot of pressure. You just don't know how much pressure. Jerry is unhappy about it," Curran quoted Fiore as telling her.

Gerardo Catena of South Orange was the reputed head of the Genovese crime family from 1957 to 1972. He died in Florida in 2000 at age 98.One of the classic stories of the New Jersey Legislature in 1968 were allegations that a Newark Assemblyman wanted to cancel a hearing on organized crime under pressure from a "lobbyist" representing Geraldo (Jerry) Catena, one of the state's most powerful mob bosses.

Senate Law and Public Safety Committee Chairman Joseph Woodcock held a news conference in December 1968 to say that his aide was told by Assembly Law and Public Safety Committee Chairman Richard Fiore that he was being pressured by Catena to stop legislative proposals to create the State Commission of Investigation, and to legalize wiretapping, and to permit certain witnesses to receive immunity from prosecution.Claire Curran Johnson, a former New York Mirror crime reporter who worked for Woodcock, told investigators for the state Attorney General's office that Fiore, a 36-year-old substitute teacher and Recreation Director for the Newark Board of Education, claimed he wanted to head the Assembly panel "to stop these kind of things."

"There is a lot of pressure. You just don't know how much pressure. Jerry is unhappy about it," Curran quoted Fiore as telling her.

In early 1977, Republicans were optimistic about their chances of defeating Democratic Governor Brendan Byrne, but some party insiders weren't quite sure their field of candidates were especially strong. The front runner was Raymond Bateman, a gentlemanly State Senator from Somerset County who had served twenty years in the Legislature, including two as Senate President. Thomas Kean, the 42-year-old Assembly Minority Leader (and former Speaker) from Essex County, was also in the race.

Other prospective candidates remained in the wings, being heavily courted by party leaders, including Matthew Rinaldo, a three-term Congressman and former State Senator from Union County. With strong ties to labor and a genuine base in the City of Elizabeth (which he carried in each of the thirteen races he ran there), he seemed to be an attractive candidate. Rinaldo spent years teasing Republicans about his interest in statewide office, but never pulled the trigger.

Frederick Lacey, a respected U.S. District Court Judge and former U.S. Attorney, was serious, and some say he wanted to run. After a meeting at his home, at least one major county GOP organization was prepared to back him. That fell apart over a small, but important, detail: Lacey wanted the endorsement to come first, and the Republicans wanted him to resign from the bench and enter the race before they would announce their backing. That was based on the precedent set four years earlier when Byrne, then a Superior Court Judge, delivered his resignation to the Governor's Office and then went outside the statehouse to announce that he would run for Governor.

The public careers of Herbert Stern and Robert Del Tufo have long been intertwined, and the tension that currently exists between the two former United States Attorneys, now at opposite ends of the battle to fix the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, goes back almost thirty years. Stern is the U.S. Department of Justice's federal monitor overseeing the state-run school, and Del Tufo is the Chairman of the UMDNJ Board of Trustees.

Stern was a career prosecutor who went from law school to trying Homicide cases as an Assistant Manhattan District Attorney. (He was the DA sent to the scene when Civil Rights leader Malcolm X. Shabbaz was murdered.) He spent four years as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice's Organized Crime and Racketeering Section. When Frederick Lacey became the new U.S. Attorney for New Jersey in 1969, he hired Stern as Chief Assistant. The two met a year earlier during the prosecution of Peter Weber, the powerful head of the New Jersey Operating Engineers Union. Stern was the prosecutor and Lacey was the defense attorney; Stern won.

Stern was named U.S. Attorney in 1970, when Lacey became a Federal Judge. In 1974, Stern joined Lacey on the bench and was replaced by his deputy, Jonathan Goldstein, also a career prosecutor.

This trio of federal prosecutors won national attention for their war on political corruption and for their aggressive prosecution of organized crime figures. While nominally Republican (they were appointed by Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford at the suggestion of GOP U.S. Senator Clifford Case), they were viewed as fairly non-political. In fact, they took town several key members of Republican Governor William Cahill's administration; that scandal contributed toward Cahill's defeat in the 1973 GOP primary.

After Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford in the 1976 presidential election, Carter replaced Goldstein with Del Tufo, a Democrat who had served as an Assistant Morris County Prosecutor and as the Director of the state Division of Criminal Justice under Brendan Byrne's first Attorney General, William Hyland. During his three years as a federal prosecutor, the more partisan Del Tufo seemed to annoy Stern when he replaced many career federal prosecutors with lawyers that had political ties.

Stern spent thirteen years as a U.S. District Court Judge and was the presiding Judge at the U.S. Court for Berlin in 1979. Martin Sheen played Stern in the movie, Judgement in Berlin, based on his 1984 book. Del Tufo sought the Democratic nomination for Governor in 1985 -- he finished last in a field of five candidates. After the 1989 election, Governor Jim Florio appointed him to serve as state Attorney General.