Joe Cryan

Ninth District Rep. Steve Rothman said today that the Barack Obama presidential campaign has not decided who will head up Obama’s efforts in New Jersey.

Rothman, an early Obama supporter who has been the candidate’s point man in New Jersey, wouldn’t say whether Obama would bring in someone new or whether the charge of running a coordinated state campaign would fall to former Clinton backers like Gov. Jon Corzine and Democratic State Chairman Joe Cryan.

“We’ve had wonderful discussions with the Clinton people in New Jersey and all the leaders, including the Governor and our state director who supported Sen. Clinton and all of the Obama leaders,” said Rothman. “We’re united and we’re working with the Obama campaign in putting together the right team for our state."

Rothman said that he met with Obama National Campaign Manager David Plouffe to discuss the situation yesterday.

U.S. Sen. FRank Lautenberg (D-NJ) exults with Gov. Jon Corzine and Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex). 

NEWARK - The Democratic Party allies of U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg stood with their nominee tonight in the Gateway Hilton shortly after challenger U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews (D-1) conceded in Cherry Hill.

After thanking his family, supporters and his defeated challenger for the congressman's offer of friendship, Lautenberg - who won by a margin of 61-34% - came out swinging in front of an animated crowd.

Hard economic times. The War in Iraq.

Former Democratic State Chairman Tom Byrne will not challenge incumbent Frank Lautenberg for his U.S. Senate seat.

Byrne faxed a statement to the Marriot Hotel in Trenton announcing he would not run, where prominent Democratic politicians are holding a rally to demonstrate their solidarity behind Lautenberg. Current Democratic State Chairman Joe Cryan read Byrne's letter to the crowd.

Byrne had conducted polling last week about his chances in a Democratic primary against Lautenberg.

“The reasoning is that Frank is popular with Democrats and I respect that,” said Byrne, a financial consultant whose father, Brendan T. Byrne, served as Governor from 1974 to 1982.

Bill Clinton, joined by Gov. Jon Corzine, campaigned in Camden today: Getty Images Photo

After receiving criticism for his role in his wife's presidential campaign in New Hampshire and South Carolina, former President Bill Clinton stuck to a lawyerly script in Blackwood today, exactly one week before New Jersey's Feb. 5 primary.

"You must vote for someone not just to make history, but for someone who's going to build the future," said Clinton, in the one unnamed reference to Sen. Hillary Clintons chief opponent, Sen. Barack Obama.

In his second New Jersey appearance for his wife's campaign in as many months, Clinton told a crowd of 1,500 in Camden Community College's Papiano Gym that the most important reason to elect his wife as the Democratic presidential nominee is because she is a "proven change agent."

John F.X. GrahamIt looked like the second coming of Edmund Muskie in New Hampshire as an emotionally glistening-eyed Sen. Hillary Clinton experienced what John Graham said was a "minor meltdown" Monday on her way into the New Hampshire primary.

But in what a redeemed and jubilant Graham a day later called "the greatest comeback in American primary history," Clinton beat Sen. Barack Obama by two percentage points.

"She was down by double digits and written off," said the New Jersey Clinton fund-raising co-chair who stormed New Hampshire over the weekend with a contingent of New Jerseyans that included U.S. representatives Frank Pallone and Bill Pascrell Jr.

At the end of his efforts, Graham was for 48 hours left exhausted and morose over Clinton’s prospects for victory only to rebound in euphoria with the presidential candidate on Tuesday night.

Obama Campaign State Director Mark Alexander

On the day of the Iowa caucuses, the New Jersey state director of Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has one immediate strategy, win or lose: on the next morning he’s going to stand up volunteers at different locales: the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, Newark Penn Station, Jersey City. They will be out there waving "Obama" signs, staying visible, shouting, working.

"We were always the candidate talking about change, that message hasn’t changed," says Mark Alexander, 41, seated in his West Orange office on Thursday, composed given the stakes. Obama’s wife said if they didn’t win Iowa, the campaign would be finished.

"Fundamentally," says Alexander, "we are content that we are offering something the American people really want."

Mims HackettGovernor Jon S. Corzine, Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts, Senate President Dick Codey and Assemblyman/Democratic Party Chairman Joseph Cryan have called on arrested Assemblymen Mims Hackett and Alfred Steele to resign by the end of the weekend, according to a statement issued by the Democratic State Committee this afternoon.

"I’m saddened that we’re at a position that we had to call for resignations. On the other hand, they had to be done. You can’t tolerate this stuff," the Democrats said in a statement.

Rival dual office holders Assemblyman (and West New York Mayor) Silverio "Sal" Vega, left, and Assemblyman (and Union City Mayor

A bill banning dual office holding sponsored by Assemblyman Michael Panter doesn’t hit hard enough, according to Republican critics, most of whom voted for the measure anyway Monday, saying something’s better than nothing and acknowledging it would be tough to face constituents if they voted against any bill that takes a crack at the practice.

The final vote tally for Panter’s bill, which bans dual office holding for those elected after Feb. 1, 2008, and grandfathers the 21 legislators who currently hold more than one elected post at the same time, was 69-3-8. Republican Assemblymen David W. Wolfe and Peter Biondi voted against it, as did Democratic Assemblyman (and West New York Mayor) Silverio Vega, who’s explained in the past that at least he’s honest in his belief that holding more than one elected office at once isn’t a crime.

The New Jersey Democratic State Committee has already raised $2.1 million for the Governor's Gala tonight featuring former President Bill Clinton.  That amount is double what the Republican State Committee raised last week at a major event with President George W. Bush. Clinton will be joined by Governor Jon Corzine, U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, Democratic State Chairman Joe Cryan, Senate President Richard Codey, Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts, and Newark Mayor Cory Booker.

Protestors navigate King George's Post Road in edison outside the Expo Center where New Jersey Republicans welcomed Bush to a fu
As an electronics technician in World War II, George Hunt of Burlington, 82, coordinated amphibious landings in the Pacific, the kind where the men ran up the beaches under fire and took territory.

"We used to sit in the navigation boat and time it so that all of our landing craft were synchronized when they hit the shore, in the Philippines, New Guinea, you name it, from 1943 until the war ended," said Hunt as he trudged within a column of New Jersey war protestors on King Georges Post Road in Edison Wednesday afternoon.

On the other side of a police line at the New Jersey Expo Center, plain clothes-men eyed the crowd and wrote in notebooks and behind them, the Republican State Committee welcomed President George W. Bush to a fund-raiser for Legislative candidates. Ticket prices ranged from $300 per-person to attend the main reception to $5,000 for a photo-op with the President.