Richard Hughes

Robert Yudin, a 67-year-old appliance store owner from Wyckoff, could be one day away from becoming the Bergen County Republican Chairman – a post that up until about six years ago was one of the most powerful positions in New Jersey politics.  Yudin will face incumbent Rob Ortiz in a runoff election tomorrow night.  Over the last few years, the former Wyckoff Board of Education member has made three unsuccessful bids for Freeholder.

Yudin's first campaign for public office came 41 years ago, when the 26-year-old Navy lieutenant who had just left active duty was recruited by Essex County Republicans as their candidate for Assemblyman.

The winners of the last eight gubernatorial elections (and nine of the last eleven) had made previous runs for statewide office.  This includes Governors seeking re-election.  In the two races where the winner had not run statewide before, the loser had sought statewide office unsuccessfully.  The last time New Jerseyans elected a Governor in a race where neither candidate had run statewide before was in 1961, when Superior Court Judge Richard Hughes defeated former U.S. Secretary of Labor James Mitchell.

In the final days of Eugene McCarthy’s campaign for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination – when Hubert Humphrey appeared to have the votes to win following the assassination of Robert Kennedy and George McGovern’s last-minute replacement candidacy never took hold – McCarthy released a list of possible cabinet appointments.  He had narrowed his choice for U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development down to two choices: Governor Richard Hughes of New Jersey and Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York.

The national political environment favored the GOP in 1966.  It was the mid-term election of Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson, and the war in Vietnam had just begun to divide the nation.  

In New Jersey, Republican Clifford Case was seeking re-election to a third term in the United States Senate, and even though Democrats scored huge wins a year earlier (Governor Richard Hughes was re-elected in a landslide and Democrats captured both houses of the Legislative), few believed the popular Case, with strong support from traditional Democratic base voters like organized labor, was going to lose.

Henry Alexander Smith represented New Jersey in the U.S. Senate from 1944 to 1959.H. Alexander Smith was a late bloomer in New Jersey politics. Born in New York, he spent twelve years practicing law in Colorado Springs (his nephew, Peter Dominick, was the Senator from Colorado before losing his seat to Gary Hart in 1974) and worked at the U.S. Food Administration in Washington during World War II. He moved to New Jersey at age 39 to become Executive Secretary of Princeton University, and was elected New Jersey's Republican National Committeeman 23 years later.

After U.S. Senator Warren Barbour died in office at the end of 1943, Smith decided to run for the United States Senate. He was 64-years-old when he defeated Congressman Elmer Wene, a onetime chicken farmer from Cumberland County, by 25,725 votes -- a 50%-49% margin. He was re-elected in 1946 (by nearly nineteen percentage points against Camden Mayor George Brunner) and again in 1952, by a 56%-44% margin over Archibald Alexander.

One of the most respected Attorneys General in modern state history was Arthur Sills, who served as the state's chief law enforcement officer through the entire eight years of Governor Richard Hughes' administration. Sills contracted polio when he was four years old, and as a young man he began traveling to Warm Springs, Georgia for treatment. There he became friends with another polio victim, Franklin D. Roosevelt. After attending Harvard Law School, Sills joined the law firm of David Wilentz, the legendary Middlesex County Democratic boss and a former Attorney General of New Jersey. He spent more than twenty years at the Wilentz firm before Hughes picked him to serve as Attorney General after the 1961 gubernatorial election. At age 43, he was among the youngest men to serve as state Attorney General. After leaving office in January, 1971, Sills founded his own firm, now known as Sills Cummis Epstein & Gross. He was one of Jim Florio's lawyers during the 1981 recount, and passed away after a stroke in 1982 at the age of 64.

State Senator Arthur Lewis was just 44-years-old when he retired from his Burlington County seat in 1948, creating a hotly contested race for an open seat. The winner was James Mercer Davis, Jr, the 39-year-old Democratic Chairman; he defeated Assemblyman Albert McCay, 47, a prominent South Jersey attorney, by a 52%-48% margin. But McCay won a 1951 rematch, ousting Davis by a 57%-43% margin. McCay was re-elected to a second term in 1955 with 56% of the vote against Edward Hulse, the Mayor of Beverly.

McCay's political career came to an end in 1959, when Burlington County Freeholder Henry Haines defeated him by a 54%-46%. But Haines turned out to be a one-term Senator: his opposition to several key legislative initiatives backed by Governor Richard Hughes caused Democrats to dump Haines from the organization line when he ran for re-election in 1963. Grover Richman, the Burlington County Democratic Chairman (and the former New Jersey Attorney General) backed Hulse, who had won election to the Board of Freeholders in 1960 and was Hughes's brother-in-law. Hulse won 57% of the vote in the primary, but lost the general election to the Republican, former Moorestown Mayor Edwin Forsythe, by a 54%-46% margin. Forsythe went on to serve as Senate President and won election to Congress in 1970 after William Cahill became Governor.

The deadline to seek Republican organizational support for Bergen County Freeholder is at 6PM tonight, and two candidates have filed letters of intent to run with incumbent Elizabeth Randall: Robert Yudin, a former Wyckoff Board of Education member who lost campaigns for Freeholder in 2003 and 2004 and for State Assembly in 1965; and John Driscoll, who lost bid for Paramus Councilman last year. Ridgefield Councilman Robert Avery is reportedly considering a Freeholder bid, but has not yet filed with the county organization.

Yudin's first campaign for public office came 41 years ago, when the 26-year-old Navy lieutenant who had just left active duty was recruited by Essex County Republicans as their candidate for Assemblyman.

In the 1963 mid-term elections, Republicans picked up an Essex County Senate seat when Robert Sarcone, the 38-year-old Assembly Minority Leader, unseated two-term Democratic incumbent Donal Fox. Republicans won five of the nine Assembly seats -- a net gain of three. Two years later, Governor, Richard Hughes carried Essex County by 69,749 votes in his bid for a second term over State Senator Wayne Dumont of Warren County. Largely on Hughes' coattails, Democrats won four Senate seats (this was the first election after the Supreme Court's one-man, one-vote decision) and nine Assembly seats in Essex County.

There were no legislative districts in those days and the entire ticket ran countywide. Elected to the Assembly, in order of their finish, were: Victor Addonizio, the brother of the Mayor of Newark; attorney Paul Policastro, a two-term incumbent; Armand Lembo, a retired FBI agent and the Director of Inspections for the City of Newark; Joseh Biancardi, the President of Teamsters Local 97; David Mandelbaum, a two-term incumbent and, at age 29, the youngest member of the legislature (Mandelbaum is now a part-owner of the Minnesota Vikings); 27-year-old tavern owner Frank Dodd, who won a Senate seat in 1971, served as Senate President in 1974 and 1975 and sought the 1981 Democratic gubernatorial nomination; John Cryan, who later served three terms as the Essex County Sheriff (and the father of Assemblyman Joseph Cryan); Ronald Owens, a lawyer and congressional aide who as Assembly Speaker Pro-Tempore became the second African American to serve as Acting Governor; and Walter Vohdin, the President of the Bricklayers Union Local 16.

Yudin finished 16th in that race, trailing six of his Republican running mates: Newark Superintendent of Weights and Measures Michael Giuliano, who later served two terms in the State Senate; freshman incumbent James Wallwork, who spent sixteen years in the Senate and ran for Governor in 1981 and 1993; Jerome Burke, a one-term Assemblyman who later moved to Monmouth County and lost a 1975 Assembly bid there; Mario Genova, the Vice President of the Electrical Workers Union Local 430 who had won an Assembly seat in 1963; Helen Slowinski, and two-term Assemblyman William Everett. He finished ahead of Gerald Delane, the son of the North Ward Republican Chairman, and Mary Edmond. In Belleville, where Yudin grew up -- his father was a lawyer and owned a paint store -- he received more votes than any other Republican candidate. Yudin lost the election by 26,337 votes -- unable to survive a 34,646 vote Democratic margin in the City of Newark.

In 1968, Yudin moved to Bergen County, where he owns an appliance store. He managed legislative and congressional campaigns in the 1970's and served two terms on the Wyckoff Board of Education. In 2004, defeated embattled Freeholder Louis Tedesco, who faces allegations of domestic violence, to win the organizational line at the Bergen GOP convention.

The last time a new Governor came from the same party as his predecessor was in 1961, when Democrat Richard Hughes followed eight years of Democrat Robert Meyner. Hughes kept ten of the fourteen members of Meyner's cabinet, replacing only the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, the President of the Board of Public Utilities, and the Commissioner of Conservation and Economic Development. Democrats say that Jon Corzine is not likely to come close to the 71% retention mark set by Hughes, although there may be some holdovers -- one likely prospect is Personnel Commissioner Rolando Torres.