Marge Roukema

If New Jersey does not elect a Congresswoman in the 2008 election, it will be the longest period of an all-male delegation since women won the right to vote in 1920.

The first of just five women to represent New Jersey in the U.S. House of Representatives was elected in 1924 -- four years after the ratification of the nineteenth amendment.  The first was Mary Norton, a political ally of Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague, who was also the first woman to serve on the Hudson County Board of Freeholders when she won in 1922. 

The pollster for the New Jersey Assembly Republicans is now in the middle of a major controversy in Michigan, where an incumbent Congressman has filed a complaint alleging that his challenger in the GOP primary has coordinated expenditures with the conservative Club for Growth by having Adam Geller poll for both the campaign and the 527 organization. Geller works for Tim Walberg, a conservative who is challenging freshman Joe Schwarz for the Republican nomination in the August 7 primary.

The Club for Growth typically backs conservative candidates against more moderate incumbents in Republican primaries. They backed Scott Garrett against Marge Roukema in 2000. Geller conducted the CFG poll in the Rhode Island Senate race, where incumbent Lincoln Chafee faces tough primary and general election battles.

At what point does nine-term Assemblyman David Russo view the Civil War among Bergen County Republicans as an opportunity? One influential Republican strategist opined that Russo should consider challenging two-term Congressman Scott Garrett in the Republican primary, suggesting that running on a line with County Executive candidate Kathleen Donovan and Freeholder Lisa Randall might be his best chance to secure the fifth district House seat that eluded him four years ago. Garrett has said he would run on the Bergen County Republican Organization line.

The Republican said that Russo's chances could increase if U.S. Senate candidate Thomas Kean decides to run on the Donovan/Randall line. Russo openly mulled a primary challenge two years ago, after losing to Garrett in 2002. Russo ran for the open seat when Marge Roukema retired in 2002 and won the Bergen GOP convention. But the primary vote in Bergen -- which accounts for more than half of the district -- was split between Russo and State Senator Gerald Cardinale. Garrett racked up big numbers in Sussex and Warren Counties and won the primary with 45 percent of the vote. Garrett has $291,000 in his warchest -- not a huge number for an incumbent.

Few Washington insiders believe New Jersey Congressman Christopher Smith has much of a chance to win the chairmanship of the House International Relations Committee if the GOP hold control of Congress in the 2006 election. Last year, the House Republican leadership deposed Smith as Chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee for not being conservative enough for their needs. Smith faces three other House members in the contest to replace Henry Hyde as head of the powerful foreign relations panel.

Despite their seniority, New Jersey Republicans have had little success in securing positions of influence in the Congress. In addition to Smith, Marge Roukema was passed over for the chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee in 2001, Jim Saxton lost a bid to head the House Natural Resources Committee in 2003, and Rodney Frelinghuysen lost his Appropriations Subcommittee Chairmanship in 2005. Still, New Jersey Republicans are split over the contest to succeed Tom DeLay as House Minority Leader. One Capitol Hill staffer suggested that New Jersey Republicans might be better off trading a united block of six votes in exchange for assurances that leadership won't pass over New Jerseyans in future battles for key committee chairmanships.

Democrats have not nominated a woman for statewide office since 1930, when Thelma Parkinson, then a 32-year-old Democratic activist, ran for the United States Senate. Walter Edge resigned from the Senate in 1929 to become the U.S. Ambassador to France, and David Baird, a Camden County Republican leader, was appointed to fill the seat. Republicans ran millionaire industrialist Dwight Morrow, the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico and the father-in-law of aviator Charles Lindbergh. Democrats decided to run two candidates: Alexander Simpson, a State Senator from Bergen County, for the six-year term, and Parkinson in a Special Election for the remaining two months of Edge's term. Parkinson won 38.6% of the vote, Simpson received 39%.

Women have won Republican statewide nominations five times: Millicent Fenwick (1982), Mary Mochary (1984) and Christie Whitman for U.S. Senate, and Whitman for Governor in 1993 and 1997.

Of the ten most populous states, New Jersey is the only one without a woman in its congressional delegation. New Jersey has been without a Congresswoman since Marge Roukema retired in 2003, and has only elected five women to Congress: Mary Norton (1924), Florence Dwyer (1956), Helen Meyner (1974), Fenwick (1974) and Roukema (1980). Norton and Meyner were Democrats; Dwyer, Fenwick and Roukema were Republicans.