Mike Doherty

Now that Assemblyman Mike Doherty has announced that he will not run for U.S. Senate, two potential challengers to Frank Lautenberg remain on the horizon.

One, Anne Estabrook, is a 63-year-old millionaire businesswoman from Spring Lake who has never run for elected office. The other, Joe Pennacchio, is a 52-year-old Brooklyn born dentist and former Democrat. He has served in the Assembly since 2001 and, after winning his party’s nomination, is heavily favored to win the 26th district’s state Senate seat in November.

While neither potential candidate is considered as conservative as Doherty, barring anyone else entering the race, Pennacchio will carry the flag for the party’s conservative wing.

“Joe and I come from the same wing of the party and share many of the same supporters,” said Doherty, who backed Pennacchio when he announced that he would not run. “Joe is a strong candidate who will confidently project Republican principles.”

Mike Doherty will not seek the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate.

Instead, Doherty, an Assemblyman from the 23rd district, will throw his support behind fellow Assemblyman Joe Pennacchio, who announced last month that he was also mulling a bid for the nomination.

Doherty told PoliticsNJ.com that the primary reason he chose not to run was that a three-way primary race would be a “suicide mission," with sniping between himself and Pennacchio making it easier for potential candidate Anne Estabrook to win the primary.

Doherty said he's more ideologically in tune with Pennacchio and called Estabrook a "Democrat light" who would not stand a chance against Frank Lautenberg.

“I talked to Joe. We’ve talked for a number of months, and we both think it would really be a problem if we got two conservatives running and it would open the door for Estabrook to win the nomination,” said Doherty.

A Quinnipiac University poll released today shows a mixed bag for the 83-year-old U.S. Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, and it’s unclear what it means for his reelection prospects. Fifty-four percent of voters say Lautenberg is too old for another term as Senator, yet voters approve of his job performance 41 to 32 percent. But only 31 percent say he deserves to be reelected, while 42 percent say he does not. Still, he beats a generic republican candidate by seven percent.

Lautenberg’s potential Republican opponents see the poll as further evidence of the elder statesman’s vulnerability. But if Democrats have any misgiving about the numbers – either those of the poll or the accumulated years in Lautenberg’s age -- they’re hiding it well. After all, New Jersey voters have not elected a Republican Senator since Clifford Case won his 1972 re-election bid. Only two other states – West Virginia and Hawaii – have gone longer without electing a Republican Senator.

Assemblyman Joseph Pennacchio says his attention is fixed on his bid for State Senate, but would not rule out a challenge to U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg next year.

"My total focus at this point is to run for State Senate, and making sure we get our majority back, as well as focusing the state party into developing a distinctive message," said Pennacchio, who is unopposed in the GOP primary for the seat currently held by retiring State Sen. Robert Martin.

When it comes to the Iraq war, potential U.S. Senate candidate Anne Estabrook has no commentI steered the broken-down clunker off Route 22 and into Kenilworth, staring grimly at the temperature gauge as it wobbled toward the red-zone.

"Go ahead," I said through gritted teeth. "Just go ahead and do it."

If the car was going to have a meltdown, I wanted it to happen before I reached Anne Estabrook’s Cranford office, where I was going to ask the millionaire businesswoman about the War in Iraq.

Arriving unannounced is one thing, but pulling up in a billow of smoke and trailing a clutter of automobile parts would make for a decidedly inauspicious entrance, particularly in the presence of the chauffeur-ferried Estabrook.

A GOP fund-raiser who’s made a lot of money in real estate and never held elected office, she wants to run for U.S. Senate against incumbent Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg. When I called the prospective candidate and left a message on Saturday, her chief handler, Larry Weitzner -- not Estabrook -- returned my phone call to confirm that she is indeed forming an exploratory committee - and that she doesn’t have a statement about Iraq.

Scanning the headlines on Monday morning, I noticed the latest casualties coming back in body bags. There were over 100 dead American soldiers in Iraq in April and that makes the war’s bloodiest month this year. The Democrats are calling for a deadline to withdraw troops. The president’s dug in against "retreat." My question for Estabrook is simple: What’s her position on the war? It was the same question I put last week to GOP Assemblyman Michael Doherty, who also wants to challenge Lautenberg.

I called Estabrook several times and there was no answer Monday.  I called her office directly and told them I was looking for her. Still no reply.

So I drove up to the offices of Elberon Properties in the Union County surburn, choking and sputtering but getting there ultimately. And giving the car a drink in grateful triumph, I called Estabrook again and still there was no response. I called her beach house in Spring Lake and the cheerful voice on the other end told me she wasn’t home but that she would call me back at the end of the week.

I was sitting there in the office park driveway reading the sports page in the Ledger, when I saw this dark sedan pull up and stop in front of a sign marked "Mrs. Estabrook." I knew that was her spot because I had toyed with the idea of parking there myself. It had been the only empty space in the lot, and I figured if I went to sleep I could count on the indignant blast of a car horn to wake me up.

But here was the car, and it had to be the car by the way it stood there unchallenged in that clearing marked for the boss.

And trudging through a no-man’s land of leaf-blowers and lawnmowers, I went up to the car where the driver stared straight ahead behind glasses, and Estabrook sat in the back seat on the phone. The noise from the back-pack clad worker bees was so loud I could barely get out the word "Iraq," before I found myself wondering, Do I rap on the window? Gesticulate wildly? Nah. So I walked inside the office building and sat down and waited. And waited. And 20 minutes later the businesswoman emerged from her car.

When she entered the building I stood up and introduced myself in the hallway and she was a flurry of friendliness as I told her how important this debate on Iraq is and wondered if she supports the troop withdrawal.

Republican Anne Evans Estabrook will take the next step in her fledgling bid for the 2008 Republican nomination for United States Senate over the next few weeks with the formation of an exploratory committee, according to her campaign consultant, Larry Weitzner.

The 60-year-old millionaire real estate developer and former New Jersey Chamber of Commerce President wants to take on 83-year-old Democrat Frank R. Lautenberg, who wants to run for a fifth term next year.

But although she's contributed heavily to Republican candidates in the past -- and to some Democrats, like Bob Menendez and Linda Stender -- at a time when her party is still shaking off the hurt of recent statewide losses and standing up on shaky legs, Estabrook will face tough questions in a GOP primary.

Her biggest trouble is lack of support.

"I don't even know her," said Morris County GOP Chairman John Sette. "I don't think anybody knows her."

As Republicans prepare their campaign to unseat Democrat Frank Lautenberg next year, their most likely candidate is Michael Doherty, a three-term Assemblyman from Warren County and one of New Jersey’s most conservative legislators.

Doherty says he’s interested in running, and his supporters regard the 43-year-old West Point graduate as a sharp, but blue collar alternative to the classic Republican mold of Clifford Case, Thomas Kean and Christine Todd Whitman.