Matthew Rinaldo

Linden Mayor Richard Gerbounka has endorsed John McCain for President, but declined to say who he would support for Congress in the hotly contested seventh district race between Democrat Linda Stender and Republican Leonard Lance.  Part of Linden is in the seventh.  Gerbounka was a Democratic Councilman until launching an Independent bid to unseat longtime Mayor John Gregorio in 2006.

Back in 1984, another Democratic Mayor from Union County endorsed a GOP presidential candidate.  In a much heralded announcement, Ronald Reagan won the backing of Thomas Dunn, who spent 28 years as the Mayor of Elizabeth.  That year, Reagan beat Walter Mondale in Elizabeth by nearly 4,000 votes, 56%-44%.  Reagan carried Linden by slightly less than 2,000 votes, also 56%-44%.  In other Democratic Union County strongholds, Reagan won Rahway by almost 2,000 votes (58%-42%), but lost Plainfield by almost 7,000 votes, 72%-28%.  But Reagan had no coattails: Democrat Bill Bradley, seeking a second term in the United States Senate, carried Elizabeth, Linden, Rahway and Plainfield by wide margins.

Several key GOP leaders approached Dr. Mehmet Oz, a nationally prominent cardiothoracic surgeon from Cliffside Park, to enter the race for U.S. Senator – but without success. Despite his national fundraising contacts and Oprah Winfrey’s infatuation with him, at some point Republicans will just stop asking Oz to run for office. He was mentioned as a U.S. Senate candidate in 2006, and as a State Senate candidate against Joseph Coniglio in 2007.

In 1958, Democrat Alexander Feinberg and former GOP Assemblyman William Cahill faced off in the old first district for the seat of Republican Charles Wolverton, who was retiring after 32 years in Congress. A Democratic year nationally, Cahill held on for a 1,829 vote victory, 50%-49%. Had Cahill lost his congressional race, he probably would not have won election as Governor in 1969.  (Feinberg, a Cherry Hill Democrat, became friends with the Senate candidate that year, Harrison Williams.  More than two decades later, when Williams was indicted in the Abscam scandal, Feinberg was a co-defendant.)

The other race was a 1953 Special Election for the seat of Republican Clifford Case, who had resigned during his ninth year in office to become the president of The Fund for the Republic. (Case returned to politics one year later to win the U.S. Senate seat of retiring freshman GOP Senator Robert Hendrickson). Most observers at the time expected the Republican, Plainfield Mayor George Hetfield, to easily win Case's congressional seat. His Democratic opponent was a 33-year-old lawyer and World War II veteran who had already lost races for State Assembly in 1951 and Plainfield City Councilman in 1952, Harrison Williams.

Who is the Matthew Rinaldo of the new generation – Michael Doherty or Jon Bramnick?

Rinaldo, the pro-labor Republican who always carried Elizabeth during his ten terms in Congress, spent two decades on short lists for statewide office – Governor in 1977, 1981, 1989 and 1993, and U.S. Senate in 1982 and 1988 – but was never able to pull the trigger; among political insiders, that became part of his legacy.

The same thing seems to be happening with Doherty, who publicly flirted with bids for Congress in 2002, Governor in 2005, U.S. Senate in 2006, State Senate in 2007 (against Leonard Lance in the GOP primary), and U.S. Senate in 2008.  How long will it take for his name to stop appearing on short lists?

In early 1977, Republicans were optimistic about their chances of defeating Democratic Governor Brendan Byrne, but some party insiders weren't quite sure their field of candidates were especially strong. The front runner was Raymond Bateman, a gentlemanly State Senator from Somerset County who had served twenty years in the Legislature, including two as Senate President. Thomas Kean, the 42-year-old Assembly Minority Leader (and former Speaker) from Essex County, was also in the race.

Other prospective candidates remained in the wings, being heavily courted by party leaders, including Matthew Rinaldo, a three-term Congressman and former State Senator from Union County. With strong ties to labor and a genuine base in the City of Elizabeth (which he carried in each of the thirteen races he ran there), he seemed to be an attractive candidate. Rinaldo spent years teasing Republicans about his interest in statewide office, but never pulled the trigger.

Frederick Lacey, a respected U.S. District Court Judge and former U.S. Attorney, was serious, and some say he wanted to run. After a meeting at his home, at least one major county GOP organization was prepared to back him. That fell apart over a small, but important, detail: Lacey wanted the endorsement to come first, and the Republicans wanted him to resign from the bench and enter the race before they would announce their backing. That was based on the precedent set four years earlier when Byrne, then a Superior Court Judge, delivered his resignation to the Governor's Office and then went outside the statehouse to announce that he would run for Governor.

Two longtime members of the New Jersey Congressional delegations will celebrate birthdays on September 1: Joseph Minish, an Essex County Democrat who served in Congress from 1963 to 1985, will celebrate his 90th birthday, while Matthew Rinaldo, a Union County Republican who was a Congressman from 1973 to 1993, turns 75.

When seven-term incumbent Hugh Addonizio gave up his House seat to run for Mayor of Newark in 1962, Essex Democrats picked Minish, the 46-year-old Executive Secretary of the Essex-West Hudson AFL-CIO, to replace him. Minish defeated Republican David Wiener, the Essex County Surrogate, by a wide margin, and spent 22 years in Washington.

Minish won re-election ten times by comfortable margins. His toughest races came in 1970, when he faced millionaire developer James Shue (the father of actors Elizabeth and Andrew Shue), and against State Senator Milton Walder in 1972. He lost his seat in 1984, after a panel of Federal Judges overturned the '82 redistricting map and put Minish in a disrict that included most of Morris County. He was defeated by Dean Gallo, the Assembly Minority Leader.

Rinaldo went to Congress in 1972 when Republican Florence Dwyer retired after sixteen years in office. (She had defeated incumbent Harrison Williams in 1956; Williams ran for the U.S. Senate in 1958 and defeated Robert Kean, a Republican Congressman from Essex County and the grandfather of the current U.S. Senate candidate.) Rinaldo, a 41-year-old State Senator and former Union County Freeholder, narrowly edged out State Senator (and former gubernatorial candidate) Frank McDermott and Assemblyman Charles Irwin for the GOP nomination, and then defeated former State Senator Jerry English (who later served in Governor Brendan Byrne's cabinet) in the General Election. Rinaldo dropped his bid for re-election to an eleventh term in September 1992, presumably to take advantage of a law that allowed federal candidates to personally keep unsused campaign funds if they retired by the end of 1992. Rinaldo walked away with over $900,000.

Rinaldo's only tough re-election campaign came in 1982, when Adam Levin, the son of a wealthy real estate developer and the state Consumer Affairs Director in the Byrne Administration, spent more than $2.3 million to defeat him. Those were the days when the Legislature (controlled by Democrats) drew congressional districts, and Levin gave a huge amount of money to Democratic legislative candidates in the 1981 election. The new district, shaped like a fish hook, went from Union County down through Middlesex County and picked up some Democratic towns in northern Monmouth County.

Minish splits his time between New Jersey and Florida. Sadly, Rinaldo has been in poor health for the last few years and lives in a nursing home in West Caldwell.

New Jersey's oldest living former Congressman is Peter Frelinghuysen, who turned 90 in January. The father of Congressman Rodney Frelinghuysen, he represented New Jersey in the House from 1953 to 1975.