John Dorsey

Arthur Albohn, who passed away on Sunday at the age of 86, was the last person to defeat an incumbent member of the State Assembly in a Morris County general election.  He did it in 1979, when he ousted Democrat Rosemarie Totaro by 3,088 votes.  (The last person to defeat an incumbent State Senator in Morris County was Anthony Bucco, who unseated Gordon MacInnes in 1997.  MacInnes had beaten John Dorsey four years earlier. 

One difference between Leonard Lance and the other Senate Republican leaders over the last thirty years is that Lance has never run himself in a competitive general election. His predecessor, John Bennett, began his legislative career by ousting three-term Democratic Assemblyman Walter Kozloski in 1979. Donald DiFrancesco, the Senate President from 1992 to 2002, unseated Democratic Assemblywoman Betty Wilson in 1975, and won a State Senate seat against Joanne Rajoppi, now the Union County Clerk, in a politically competitive district that included Plainfield and Rahway. John Dorsey, who followed DiFrancesco as Senate Minority Leader in 1984, defeated incumbent Democrats Gordon MacInnes and Rosemarie Totaro to win an Assembly seat in 1975, and beat incumbent State Senator Stephen Wiley in 1977. And Thomas Gagliano, who was Minority Leader in the late 1970's, won a competitive race for an open Senate seat in 1977, defeating Marlboro Mayor Arthur Goldzweig in a district that elected one Republican and one Democrat to the Assembly that year.

A group of Democrats have launched a grass roots effort to draft Dana Wefer to run for the State Assembly in the 25th district, against incumbents Michael Patrick Carroll and Richard Merkt. Wefer, a 24-year-old law student, ran strong, but uphill, races for Morris County Freeholder in 2005 and 2006. In her last race, the Democratic rising star ran 3,595 votes ahead of her running mate and won endorsements from the Daily Record and eleven weekly newspapers.

Some Democrats view the 25th as potentially competitive, although Carroll and Merkt have had little trouble winning the district by solid margins in past elections. In 2005, Democrats Thomas Jackson and Janice Schindler lost by nearly 5,000 votes.

Democrats have not carried the 25th since 1993, when Gordon MacInnes unseated Senate Majority Leader John Dorsey in a contest that was almost entirely about Dorsey's ethics and his decision to block the reappointment of a Superior Court Judge. Four years later, MacInnes lost his seat to Republican Anthony Bucco.

The last Democrat to represent the district in the Assembly was Rosemarie Totaro, who won an open seat in 1977 against Republican Joseph Maraziti, a 65-year-old former Congressman and State Senator who has spent nearly forty years in politics. Maraziti had considerable political liabilities: as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, Maraziti emerged as a staunch defender of President Richard Nixon, and his friendship with one of his congressional staffers -- female secretary with no typing skills -- received national attention.

Former Senate Majority Leader John Dorsey is headed to court: he has filed a lawsuit against the Mayor of Mount Olive, alleging that Richard De La Roche owes him money. The embattled De La Roche, a Democrat, has been trying to fire the Dorsey as Municipal Attorney since he took office in 2004, but the Republican controlled Council has refused to approve any of De La Roche's replacements -- leaving Dorsey in holdover status. Dorsey lost his bid for a sixth term in the Senate in 2003 amidst criticism of the fees he received from Morris County municipalities represented by his law firm, and over his use of senatorial courtesy to block the reappointment of Superior Court Judge Marianne Espinosa Murphy, who was married to a Dorsey rival, then-Morris County Prosecutor Michael Murphy.