Encouraging spin for Glading, Kurkowski, Myers, Zeitz, Shulman, McLeod, Stender, Stratten, Micco, Wyka, Bateman & Turula

Now it seems trendy to run for Congress, lose, then spend a lot of years in state government before finally making it to Washington.  In 2006, Albio Sires won an open House seat twenty years after his first attempt.  Sires had challenged U.S. Rep. Frank Guarini as a Republican in 1986; he later won local office in West New York, and after switching parties in 1999, he beat an incumbent Assemblyman in the Democratic primary.  He became Assembly Speaker after the 2001 election, and went to Congress after Bob Menendez joined the United States Senate.

Both of New Jersey's freshmen Congressman had previously lost House races.  John Adler ran against Jim Saxton in 1990 and lost 60%-40%.  A year later, despite one of the two biggest Republican landslides in state political history, he ousted four-term GOP State Sen. Lee Laskin.  Leonard Lance first ran for Congress in 1996, when Richard Zimmer gave up his seat to run for U.S. Senate; he finished third in the GOP primary, behind Michael Pappas and John Bennett. Lance moved from the Assembly to the Satate Senate in 2001, and became Minority Leader in 2004.

Of the remaining ten New Jerseyans in Congress, six had lost congressional races before they won: Frank LoBiondo unsuccessfully challenged Bill Hughes in 1992 and won an open seat when Huges retired in 1994; Christopher Smith lost badly to twelve-term incumbent Frank Thompson in 1978, and won two years later after Thompson's indictment in the Abscam scandal; Scott Garrett took on Marge Roukema in the 1998 and 2000 GOP primaries, and was elected to Congress when Roukema retired in 2002; Donald Payne lost Democratic primaries against Peter Rodino in 1980 and 1986 and won when Rodino retired in 1988; Rodney Frelinghuysen was defeated in two Republican primaries prior to his election to an open seat in 1994 when Dean Gallo dropped his re-election bid following the primary -- he lost to U.S. Rep. Jim Courter in 1982, and lost an open seat race to Zimmer in 1990; and Rush Holt lost a 1996 Democratic primary to David DelVecchio, who lost the open seat to Pappas, whom he beat two years later.