Jersey Joe Pennacchio

Win a steak dinner from Jersey Joe PennacchioHow would you like to have Jersey Joe Pennacchio buy you a steak dinner?

When the Morris County State Senator entered the race for the GOP U.S. Senate nomination last week, PolitickerNJ.com reporter Matt Friedman asked him what he thought about Anne Evans Estabrook receiving campaign contributions from Senate Minority Leader Mitchell McConnell (R-KY) and U.S. Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), the Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

“I’m a Jersey Joe. I’m an average Joe. Ask the average person who Ensign and McConnell are. If you get one person out of a thousand who knows who they are who’s not an insider, I’ll buy you a steak dinner,” said Pennacchio.

That’s a fair challenge. Sometime over the next week, ask people you know -- non-insiders – to tell you who Ensign and McConnell are. If you can get one out of the first 1,000 people you ask to get it right, e-mail us your name. We’ll pass your name on to Sen. Pennacchio, with the hope that he’ll keep his word and buy you a steak dinner. And since this is basically an honest state, we’ll take your word for it.

New Jerseyans like the job Democrat Frank Lautenberg is doing in the United States Senate, but most voters seem ready for a change – and not because Lautenberg would be 90-years-old at the end of his text term, according to a new Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey poll released today. Just 19% of New Jersey voters say that Lautenberg should be re-elected to a fifth term, while 58% want someone else. And still, 51% of voters disagree that Lautenberg is getting to old to be effective.

In head-to-head contests, Lautenberg leads two Republican candidates by about the same margins: 38%-24% against millionaire developer Anne Evans Estabrook, and 40%-25% against State Sen. Joseph Pennacchio. The poll did not include Ramapo College Professor Murray Sabrin, a Ron Paul supporter who entered the race after the survey went into the field.