Joe Kyrillos

Sen. Joe KyrillosState Sen. Joseph Kyrillos issued a statement today indicating that he would not pursue a run for the U.S. senate in 2008.

"I am flattered and grateful for the encouragement of some good friends and allies," said the senator from Middletown. "Susan and I considered a race and have made a family decision not to pursue it. Each of the announced Republican candidates would be a far more effective Senator than the incumbent."

Kyrillos spearheaded the New Jersey effort for Mitt Romney's unsuccessful presidential campaign.

Some Republicans, including Monmouth County Republican Chairman Adam Puharic, suggested Kyrillos' entry into the 2008 Senate race would be a game-changing event.

Sen. Joe KyrillosFormer Mayor Rudy Giuliani is endorsing Sen. John McCain for president, and the McCain camp in New Jersey anticipates welcoming into its collective arms that grim exodus of former Giuliani supporters.

"What will happen, presuming published reports are somewhat accurate, is that a good portion of them will be joining us," said Larry Bathgate, national finance co-chairman of the McCain campaign.

Sen. Joe Kyrillos, state chairman of the Mitt Romney Presidential Campaign, hopes to stem the stampede. Today he corraled at least some former Giuliani partisans, dislodged from Giuliani's ranks after the former mayor's devastating loss in the Florida primary on Tuesday.

Following his disappointing third-place finish in Florida on Tuesday, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is expected to drop his presidential bid today and endorse Sen. John McCain, sending GOP operators around New Jersey into BlackBerry heat-seeking mode.

Senators Bil Baroni (McCain's state campaign chairman) and fellow McCain-backer Kevin O'Toole naturally believe Giuliani's supporters in New Jersey will find refuge in the McCain camp rather than in that of former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, who placed second in Florida and is still in the presidential hunt.

Romney State Campaign Director Joseph Kyrillos will be pressing the case for the Giuliani wayfarers to join Team Mitt.

Reporters Roundtable with Michael Aron (NJN, Sunday 10AM): Dunstan McNichol, Kevin McArdle, Charles Stile and Michael Symons talk about Gov. Jon Corzine’s toll road plan, Steve Lonegan’s arrest, the $2.5 billion dollar budget cut, school construction borrowing and the presidential primary.

On the Record with Michael Aron (NJN, Sunday 9AM and 11AM, Monday at 6:30AM): Surrogates for Republican presidential candidates discuss New Jersey's February 5th primary – Bill Baroni, Joe Kyrillos, Murray Sabrin, Paul Beaudreau and George Gilmore.

Following the post South Carolina departure of Sen. Fred Thompson from the presidential race, former Assemblyman Guy Gregg, state director of the Thompson campaign in New Jersey, announced today he would throw his support behind Mitt Romney.

"We need a businessman and someone with a fresher perspective outside of Washington," said Gregg, who will recommend to others in the Thompson camp that they back Romney.

New Jersey Republicans who had signed on with Mitt Romney looked as though they were heading straight for the triage unit going into Michigan on Tuesday when their presidential candidate came alive and beat the surging Sen. John McCain.

"It was the first state in the mix that looks like America, and he won it by ten points," state Sen. Joseph Kyrillos, Romney’s state chairman in New Jersey, said of Romney’s performance in the ethnically diverse mid-western state.

Sen. Joe KyrillosPinned to the Iowa flatlands by bass playing southern evangelist Mike Huckabee in last week’s caucus despite outspending his rival 9-1, former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney hopes to do better in New Hampshire on Tuesday, and helping him in that effort is state Sen. Joe Kyrillos.

The N.J. state chair of Romney’s campaign, Kyrillos led a 15-person GOTV delegation to the Granite State this weekend to try to forge a Romney victory, solemnly aware of Iowa but not hamstrung by it, the senator insists.

"First of all, half of the Republican delegates in Iowa are evangelicals," said Kyrillos. "Ronald Reagan didn’t win Iowa. Neither did George Bush and Bill Clinton."

Republicans not endorsing former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani fretted yesterday that the GOP’s balloting procedure would unfairly impact their own presidential candidates, and fought an email war with the state party chairmen to try to get him to intervene.

What made the matter worse for some proud party members was having to watch the Democratic State Committee relinquish its prior commitment to giving establishment candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton the line A position virtually statewide.

They argued that while Republicans were essentially handing the ballot pole position to Giuliani, the Clinton-centric Democratic leadership was mercifully loosening its stranglehold on the process to allow rival campaigns to get an equal shot at the line.

"Why is it that the New Jersey GOP isn't following the Democratic State Committee’s lead in holding an open draw for presidential candidates?" Republican counsel Brian Nelson asked State Committee Chairman Tom Wilson. "Why are the Republicans still following the process the Democrats are abandoning?"

Tom Kean, Jr.: Getty Images

Tom Kean, Jr. was unanimously selected by Senate Republicans today as the new Minority Leader, replacing Leonard Lance.

Lance told PoliticsNJ.com that he allowed Kean to ascend to the position unchallenged, and said that he will become the party's ranking member on the Budget Appropriations Committee.

Sen. Joe Kyrillos said that he nominated Kean for the position.

Former New Jersey Chamber of Commerce Chairwoman Anne Evans Estabrook took the first step toward her bid for the 2008 Republican nomination for U.S. Senate by announcing the formation of an exploratory committee that includes a Congressman, four GOP County Chairs, three state legislators and several key Republican fundraisers.

Backing Estabrook’s bid to unseat four-term Democrat Frank Lautenberg are Rep. Mike Ferguson, former Republican National Committee Finance Chairman Lewis Eisenberg, State Senators Diane Allen and Joe Kyrillos, Assemblywoman Amy Handlin, Monmouth County GOP Chairman Adam Puharic, Union County GOP Chairman Phil Morin, Gloucester County GOP Chairman Loran Oglesby, and Camden County GOP Chairman Rick DeMichelle.