Thomas Dunn

New Jersey is assured of at least twelve new State Senators when the Legislature meets in January 2007.  But with just a handful of competitive general election contests, it seems almost impossible for the next freshman class to be larger than the Senate produced after the 1977 general election -- when twenty of the forty Senators were different than those elected in 1973.

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.

When L. Harvey Smith returns to Trenton in January, he will join a rather obscure and exclusive club: former State Senators who become Assemblymen. Smith served in the Senate for three months in 2003 and 2004, between Joseph Charles' resignation to become a Superior Court Judge and Glenn Cunningham taking office in January 2004.

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.