Jim Saxton

Congressional candidate Chris MyersThird Congressional District candidate Chris Myers is taking a leave of absence from his job as a vice-president at Lockheed Martin through the remainder of the campaign season.

The Republican will now be a full-time candidate through Nov. 4th, according to a news release issued by his campaign on Wednesday.

"Anyone who knows me, knows that I have never been one to do things half-way, and this campaign will be no different," said Myers. "The residents of this district deserve nothing less from someone seeking to earn their support, their trust and their vote for Congress."

Sen. John Adler (D-Camden)

TRENTON - The general election race to succeed U.S. Rep. Jim Saxton (R-3) has opened up in earnest now, with GOP Medford Mayor Chris Myers charging his Democratic opponent, state Sen. John Adler (D-Camden) with being part of the Trenton spending beast, and Adler arguing that Myers has been hapless at the local level.

In the face of a letter from Myers urging him to vote "no" on the state budget this evening, Adler defended the $32.9 billion document, and seized the opportunity to criticize Myers for what he sees as the Medford mayor’s failure to harness local spending.

Myers fired first in the letter he mailed to the state senator last week, in advance of the full Senate’s consideration of the budget. He specifically targeted the budget’s spending cuts for small-sized towns.

Bill Layton says he must have been in diapers when the Democrats had a freeholder in Burlington County.

"It was the early 1980s anyway," said the Republican Party chairman, who unanimously won re-election at his party’s re-organization meeting last week and champions GOP Freeholder Aubrey Fenton and his running mate, Stacy Jordan.

The history doesn’t dim the enthusiasm of Layton’s rival, Rick Perr, chair of the Burlington County Democratic Organization, who believes this is the year his candidates for freeholder, Chris Brown and Mary Anne Reinhart, can win.

"Looking back on 2007, it wasn’t a good year for Democrats," admitted Perr. "We assumed the anti-Republican sentiment we saw in 2006 would build up to a crescendo."

It didn’t happen.

New Jersey supporters of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) celebrated their candidate’s courage as they enlivened the crowd here at Burlington County Community College in advance of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s appearance.

McCain is campaigning in New Jersey today for the fourth time in five months, according to state Sen. Bill Baroni (R-Mercer), state campaign chair for McCain, who is serving as emcee here in Pemberton.

After receiving a standing ovation from the crowd of 2,000 here packed into the gym, retiring U.S. Rep. Jim Saxton (R-3) made his argument for McCain simple and straightforward.

Medford Mayor Chris Myers 

In what is quickly becoming a dogfight, Ocean County Freeholder Jack Kelly this morning derided his opponent, Medford Mayor Chris Myers, for to date not submitting personal financial disclosure information required by the feds.

The Myers campaign answered that they intend to file in the next few days, and meanwhile took aim at Kelly as a government bureaucrat gorged for years on patronage jobs - a depiction that Kelly strenuously resisted.

Less than a week after entering the Republican U.S. Senate race, former Rep. Dick Zimmer has won the endorsement of half of the state’s GOP congressional delegation.

Representatives Frank LoBiondo, Jim Saxton and Mike Ferguson all announced their support for Zimmer today, citing his fiscal conservatism. 

The moment Medford Mayor Chris Myers stepped into the third district congressional primary, most insiders picked himas the favorite Republican to continue retiring Rep. Jim Saxton’s legacy.

Even after Ocean County Freeholder Jack Kelly entered the GOP race with the support of his large Republican county’s powerful organization support , Myers managed to maintain the mantle of frontrunner, winning the coveted line in his native Burlington County, along with neighboring Camden County -- which only has one town in the district, albeit a large one: Cherry Hill.

But fundraising totals reported by the Press of Atlantic City on Wednesday suggest a race much closer than initially expected.

According to the report, Myers has raised $334,786.77 and has $288,000 on hand. Meanwhile, Kelly has raised approximately $306,000, and has $281,000 on hand.

TRENTON - As Democrats gear up for a bruising senate primary season, unofficial congressional filing results with the state Division of Elections show no same-party challengers to incumbent Democratic congressmen.      

Only in the 1st District, where Democratic U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews is vacating his seat to challenge U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg in the primary, are there several hopefuls battling for what Andrews leaves behind.

While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already called on President Bush to boycott the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics this summer, Rep. Chris Smith wants to take it further – a complete boycott of the games.

In an interview with PolitickerNJ.com last week, Smith renewed his call to boycott the Olympics, in part because of the Chinese government’s recent crackdown on Tibetan dissent. But Smith has been a long-time advocate of such a protest, stemming from the Chinese regime’s long record of human rights violations.

“I’ve called for it very aggressively,” said Smith, the former chairman of the House Judiciary’s subcommittee on Human Rights and Law. “We’re calling it the ‘genocide Olympics’ because of their enabling of the genocide in Darfur.”

When Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) announced his retirement last month, Democrats reacted with glee and optimism at the prospect of running a competitive race for the open seat, especially with a candidate, Bob Lord, who had raised $600,000.

That hopefulness was dampened, however, when Shadegg reneged on his decision just 10 days later -- after entreaties from 130 congressional colleagues and letters from conservative supporters who begged him to reconsider.

Two Republicans say that's not going to happen here.

Regardless of the chances that their seats will turn from red to blue, Reps. Jim Saxton and Mike Ferguson say that there's no chance they'll pull a Shadegg.