John Gregorio

If you blinked, you probably missed the brief glimmer of hope for Republicans in the 22nd district, where federal prosecutors served incumbent State Senator Nicholas Scutari with a subpoena as part of the same Christmas tree budget probe that involves the Senator from Bergen County, Joseph Coniglio.

In 1977, Thomas Dunn was a State Senator and the Mayor of Elizabeth, while John Gregorio was an Assemblyman and the Mayor of Linden. Union County Democrats dumped Dunn from the organization line and ran Gregorio for the Senate; Dunn sought re-election as an Independent.

"Mayor Gregorio said that while the (Union Democratic) County Committee had adopted a rule against holding dual public offices he and Mayor Dunn had been 'grandathered in" because they had held the two positions prior to the adoption of the rule."
-- Alfonso A. Navarez, New York Times, 10/16/77.

In addition to being incarcerated until April 2010, former Senate President John Lynch must pay a $50,000 fine and cannot hold public office for at least two years after his release from prison. The ban on Lynch's return to public service before the spring of 2012 is not entirely off the wall: voters in Linden returned John Gregorio to office in 1990, eight years after his criminal conviction (and just months after his gubernatorial pardon), and voters in Union City re-elected William Vincent Musto as Mayor on the day he was sentenced to prison following his own criminal conviction.

Among the most stunning upsets of the 2006 campaign was the defeat of Linden Mayor John Gregorio, described by the Star-Ledger at the "iconic lion of Linden politics ... a controversial and bare-knuckled Democrat whose career was punctuated by a criminal conviction and an extraordinary comeback." The 80-year-old Gregorio lost to Councilman Richard Gerbounka, a former Democrat who ran as an Independent, by 74 votes.

Gregorio was first elected Mayor in 1967 and served until his 1983 criminal conviction; he was elected to the State Assembly in 1973 and 1975 and won races for the State Senate seat in 1977 (defeating incumbent Thomas Dunn, the Mayor of Elizabeth) and 1981. On his final day in office in 1990, Governor Thomas Kean pardoned Gregorio, enabling him to run again for Mayor later that year.

Gerbounka, 60, a retired Police Captain and onetime Gregorio ally, won a Council seat in 1994 as a Democrat. He split with Gregorio four years ago and won re-election to the Council as an Independent.

The best race in New Jersey this year turned out to be in the seventh congressional district, where the same national issues that helped Democrats capture control of the U.S. House of Representatives nearly ended Republican Michael Ferguson's political career. Ferguson defeated Democratic Assemblywoman Linda Stender by a narrow 49%-48% margin, winning a fourth term by just 3,259 votes out of 193,272 cast. Two Indepedent candidates combined for 5,053 votes.

Ferguson carried Hunterdon County by 5,710 votes (56%-40%) and Somerset County by just 3,232 votes (52%-46%), while Stender carried Union County by a 717 vote margin (50%-49%) and Middlesex County by 4,966 votes (56%-41%).

Ferguson was one of the Republicans in Congress who recognized the potential for a tough race early enough to avoid being taken by surprise, and Democrats never really added Stender to their list seats they seriously though they could win. Stender could run again in 2008, but unless the political environment stays the same or gets worse over the next two years, Ferguson is not likely to have future electoral problems under the current map. (In the very Republican year of 1980, Marie Muhler won 49% of the vote against seven-term Democratic Congressman James Howard, but as the climate shifted away from the GOP, she won just 36% in her 1982 rematch.)

One Democratic leader wondered, albeit prematurely, whether Stender's strong showing and the upset defeat of Linden Mayor John Gregorio could create an opportunity for Stender to replace Nicholas Scutari as the State Senator in the 22nd district next year. Stender wanted that seat in 2003 when Joseph Suliga ended his re-election campaign, but Gregorio insisted on Scutari instead.

In 1977, two New Jersey State Senators sought re-election as Independents after losing the support of their party. Joseph McGahn, a physician whose place in New Jersey political history was secured when he ousted the legendary Senator (and Atlantic County GOP boss) Frank "Hap" Farley in 1971, was dumped from the Atlantic County Democratic line. McGahn lost to the Democratic nominee, Assemblyman Steven Perskie, who went on to serve as Senate Majority Leader, Chief of Staff to the Governor, Chairman of the Casino Control Commission, and two tours of duty as a Superior Court Judge.

Thomas Dunn, the Mayor of Elizabeth, lost the backing of Union County Democrats for a second term in the Senate. He lost to Assemblyman John Gregorio, the Mayor of Linden. Gregorio left the Senate after his criminal conviction in 1982, and returned to public life as the Mayor of Linden after then-Governor Thomas Kean pardoned him on his final day in office in January 1990.

A third incument Senator running as an Independent was Anthony Imperiale, who like McGahn, Perskie, Dunn and Gregorio, has a place in state political history. Imperiale won national attention as a North Ward community leader and vigilante during the 1966 Newark riots. He won a City Council seat in 1970, and running as an Independet, was elected to the State Assembly in 1971 and to the Senate in 1973. Imperiale forced Newark Mayor Kenneth Gibson into a runoff in 1974, but lost his Senate seat in 1977 to Frank Rodgers, who served as Mayor of Harrison for fifty years. Imperiale made a comeback in 1979, winning an Assembly seat as a Republican (he defeated three-term incumbent John Cali), but gave up his seat two years later to make an unsuccessful run for the GOP gubernatorial nomination.