Bill Schluter

Lafayette College Special Collections & College Archives Photo

Helen Meyner campaigns for Congress in 1974. The former First Lady's bid to unseat freshman U.S. Rep. Joseph Maraziti was the first campaign for Don Herche, a pollster and consultant who passed away last night

Democratic pollster Don Herche, who passed away last night, began his political career in 1974 as a young staffer on the campaign of Democrat Helen Stevenson Meyner, the former First Lady of New Jersey who was a candidate for Congress in a heavily Republican district.

The story of Meyner's congressional campaign actually begins four years earlier when Republicans cut a deal to clear the field for GOP State Chairman Nelson Gross in the race for U.S. Senate.  One potential primary rival, Morris County State Sen. Joseph Maraziti, dropped his statewide bid with the promise that he would chair the committee that drew new congressional districts after the 1970 census.

Maraziti drew what became known as the Maraziti district: a Democratic House seat in Hudson County was eliminated (forcing two incumbents to face off in a primary), and replaced with a new seat in northwestern New Jersey that included Hunterdon, Sussex and Warren counties, part of Morris, and a small part of western Mercer.  The district was so Republican that Richard Nixon carried it with 70% of the vote against George McGovern.  (In 2008, Republican House candidates won 64% of the vote in the towns that make up the old thirteenth district.)

As a candidate for Congress, the 60-year-old Maraziti won 50% in the GOP primary, defeating Sussex Assemblyman Walter Keough-Dwyer (25%) and Mercer Assemblyman Karl Weidel (17%). 

In the general election, Maraziti faced Meyner, 43, a cousin of Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson and the wife of Robert Meyner, who served as Governor from 1954 to 1962.  Maraziti won 56%-43%.

As a freshman Congressman, Maraziti won a seat on the House Judiciary Committee, which put him in the national spotlight as a staunch defender of Nixon.  He voted against all three articles of impeachment.   Meyner decided to run again in 1974.

Her campaign, the one Herche worked on, was helped by the disclosure that Maraziti put his girlfriend, 35-year-old Linda Collinson, on his congressional payroll in a no-show job  -- one of the highest salaries on his staff -- while she worked at a Whippany law firm.  Collinson was outed when she applied for a loan with the House credit union and a staffer who answered the phone in Maraziti's office said she had never heard of her.  Real estate records also listed the house where Collinson lived as owned by Maraziti.

Late in the campaign, the Hackettstown Star-Gazette fired their managing editor, Donald Thatcher, after the Meyner campaign pointed out that Maraziti put Thatcher on his congressional payroll to write press releases.  Nicholas DeRienzo, who was the general manager of two northwestern New Jersey radio stations, WCRV and WFMV-FM, was also put on Maraziti's payroll.

Democratic pollster Donald Herche passed away last night.  He was the owner of Public Opinion Research, Inc., a Maryland-based polling company that did work for New Jersey Democratic candidates. 

A graduate of Drew University, Herche started out in New Jersey politics during Helen Meyner's successful campaign for Congress against incumbent Joseph Maraziti in 1974.  Herche later joined Meyner's congressional staff as communications director, and helped run her 1976 re-election campaign against Republican Bill Schluter. 

Former Republican state Sen. Bill Schluter wants to see his old seat kept in moderate Republican hands, and he thinks Hunterdon County Freeholder Matt Holt is the man to do it.

Schluter, 81 is actively working to help Holt, the grandson of former U.S. Sen. Clifford P. Case, run for the 23rd District state Senate seat.

“I’m definitely in the camp of Matt Holt. I think he’s an outstanding individual and would make a good state senator. I’d like to retain the district as a Republican district, and I think he could do that,” said Schluter.

Holt has formed an exploratory committee, but yesterday told PolitickerNJ that he would not make a formal announcement until after Thanksgiving.

True, the 23rd District is drawn to be safely Republican, but, Schluter said, “stranger things have happened.”

Matthew John Rinaldo (1931-2008)
Friends and rivals remember Matthew J. Rinaldo, a former Republican Congressman who died yesterday after a long bout with Parkinson's disease at age 77, for his bipartisan style and top notch constituent services.

For Rinaldo, a Republican, that bipartisanship was partly out of necessity. For the entirety of his 20 years in the House, he was a member of the minority party.

"There is no Republican now serving in the House of Representatives who has ever chaired a committee, gaveled a hearing to order, or scheduled a bill for debate on the House floor," he said in a statement announcing his retirement. "Unfortunately, I do not foresee any prospect of that changing in the near term."

Rinaldo served on the House Energy and Commerce Committee as well as the House Select Committee on Aging, and those who knew him say he was frustrated that he never got a chairmanship.

Two years later, the Republicans swept into power. But many of the newcomers of the "Republican Revolution," led by the new House Speaker Newt Gingrich, were not Rinaldo's ilk. They were rock-ribbed conservatives, while he was a moderate with strong labor ties and strong alliances with key Democrats.

He developed a political alliance with Elizabeth Mayor Thomas Dunn - a Democrat who endorsed Ronald Reagan in 1980 - and carried that heavily Democratic city during most, if not all, of his campaigns.

"They both worked across the aisle. That's why both of them were so successful. The key in new jersey has been, and still is, people who can appeal to both parties," said former Gov. Tom Kean. "I did the same thing."

One of the gripes some members of the state political elite have with Gov. Jon Corzine is that politically he can be a bit tone deaf.  Here's an example: yesterday, Corzine announced a rather bold, potentially historic proposal for campaign finance reform, taking on those so-called party bosses and special interest groups. Then later in the day, he quitely nominated a new member of the state Ethics Commission: newly-elected Democratic National Committeewoman Stephanie Bush-Baskette, a former Assemblywoman from East Orange and state Community Affairs Commissioner.  She now works (albeit part-time) at Florio Perrucci Steinhardt & Fader, a politically active law firm that is registered to lobby state government.  The highly regarded Bush-Baskette also runs an urban policy center at Rutgers University, which has numerous overlaps with state government.

(Editor's note: Bush-Baskette, who defeated Roz Samuels for the DNC seat in July and took office a few weeks ago, resigned her seat yesterday, just prior to Corzine's announcement.)

Anne Martindell (1914-2008) served in the New Jersey State Senate from 1974 to 1977.State Sen. Anne Martindell of Princeton, who died yesterday at 93, championed the underdog throughout a life marked by public service and a thirst for knowledge and self-improvement. In the words of her son, Princeton Councilman Roger Martindell, "she fought for what she believed in, and she was gracious in the fight."

Elected to the state Senate as a Democrat in 1973 as part of the Watergate backlash that landed a number of Democrats in the Statehouse to form a 28-12 Democratic majority, Martindell served one term before becoming President Jimmy Carter’s Ambassador to New Zealand.

In her eighties, she doubled back on the college career she never completed. Sixty-years after leaving Smith College following her freshman year, Martindell obtained her Bachelor’s degree from Smith and an honorary doctorate of law in 2002.

On Thursday, news of her death brought forth an outpouring of goodwill from those who knew her and those with whom she served in Trenton, including former Gov. Brendan T. Byrne.

Anne Martindell (1914-2008) served in the New Jersey State Senate from 1974 to 1977.Former State Sen. Anne Clark Martindell, a Democrat who won an upset victory in a solidly Republican legislative district in 1973 and went on to become the United States Ambassador to New Zealand, passed away on Wednesday.  She was 93.

Martindell became involved in politics in 1968 when her brother, Blair Clark, was the campaign manager for Eugene McCarthy’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.  She ran for State Senator in a Hunterdon County-based district that included Princeton, Pennington and the Hopewells, and narrowly defeated incumbent Bill Schluter in 1973, when Watergate caused Republicans to lose ten State Senate seats. 

She left the Senate in 1977 when President Jimmy Carter appointed her to serve as an Ambassador.  Her Senate seat was won by Republican Walter Foran.

If New Jersey does not elect a Congresswoman in the 2008 election, it will be the longest period of an all-male delegation since women won the right to vote in 1920.

The first of just five women to represent New Jersey in the U.S. House of Representatives was elected in 1924 -- four years after the ratification of the nineteenth amendment.  The first was Mary Norton, a political ally of Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague, who was also the first woman to serve on the Hudson County Board of Freeholders when she won in 1922. 

Two Democratic Assemblymen have filed as Independent candidates for State Senate this fall, yet the remain members of the Assembly Democratic Caucus and continue to hold committee chairmanships.

William Payne filed petitions this month as a Senate candidate in the 29th district against Teresa Ruiz, the Democratic nominee. He remains a member of the leadership, as Deputy Majority Conference Leader, and is the Chairman of the Assembly Regulatory Oversight Committee and Vice Chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee.

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.