Joseph Maraziti

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. 

Biotech millionaire John Crowley is still mulling a bid for the Republican nomination for Governor.  If he wins, he'd be the first Governor with no previous public sector experience since Woodrow Wilson moved from college president to Governor in 1910.  But in U.S. Senate races, the lack of political experience is more prevalent: New Jersey sent first-time candidates to the Senate in 1942, 1978, 1982 and 2000.

And if you're an extreme political junkie: if Leonard Lance wins a House seat tomorrow, he'll join a fairly elite group -- New Jersey  Congressmen who have served in both the State Senate and General Assembly.  The last ones were Bob Menendez in 1992, Jim Saxton in 1984, Harold Hollenbeck in 1976, Joseph Maraziti in 1972, and Elijah Hutchinson in 1914.

If Linda Stender wins her race against Leonard Lance, she would become just the sixth woman to represent New Jersey in the U.S. House of Representatives since the ratification of the 19th Ammendment in 1920 -- and just the second to go without beating an incumbent.

Four of New Jersey's five Congresswomen went to Washington after defeating an incumbent: Mary Norton, a Hudson County Freeholder who went to Congress in 1924 when she defeated incumbent John Eagan in the Democratic primary with the backing of Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague; Florence Dwyer, an Assemblywoman from Elizabeth, who ousted two-term Democrat Harrison Williams in 1956; Helen Meyner, the former First Lady of New Jersey, who beat freshman Republican Joseph Maraziti in 1974; and former Ridgewood Board of Education President Marge Roukema, who unsteated three-term Democrat Andrew Maguire in 1980.

New Jersey Republicans have nine non-incumbent candidates for Congress in 2008, the most since 1976 when the state's House delegation had a 12-3 Democratic majority.  For the last decade, New Jersey Democrats have held a 7-6 majority in the House.

Here's a brief history of the party turnover of New Jersey House seats:

Arthur Albohn, who passed away on Sunday at the age of 86, was the last person to defeat an incumbent member of the State Assembly in a Morris County general election.  He did it in 1979, when he ousted Democrat Rosemarie Totaro by 3,088 votes.  (The last person to defeat an incumbent State Senator in Morris County was Anthony Bucco, who unseated Gordon MacInnes in 1997.  MacInnes had beaten John Dorsey four years earlier. 

Back in 1972, when legislators still drew congressional districts with the consent of the Governor -- and when the GOP controlled state government -- court mandated redistricting led to the creation of a new Republican district in northwestern New Jersey at the expense of a Democratic district in Hudson County. 

A group of Democrats have launched a grass roots effort to draft Dana Wefer to run for the State Assembly in the 25th district, against incumbents Michael Patrick Carroll and Richard Merkt. Wefer, a 24-year-old law student, ran strong, but uphill, races for Morris County Freeholder in 2005 and 2006. In her last race, the Democratic rising star ran 3,595 votes ahead of her running mate and won endorsements from the Daily Record and eleven weekly newspapers.

Some Democrats view the 25th as potentially competitive, although Carroll and Merkt have had little trouble winning the district by solid margins in past elections. In 2005, Democrats Thomas Jackson and Janice Schindler lost by nearly 5,000 votes.

Democrats have not carried the 25th since 1993, when Gordon MacInnes unseated Senate Majority Leader John Dorsey in a contest that was almost entirely about Dorsey's ethics and his decision to block the reappointment of a Superior Court Judge. Four years later, MacInnes lost his seat to Republican Anthony Bucco.

The last Democrat to represent the district in the Assembly was Rosemarie Totaro, who won an open seat in 1977 against Republican Joseph Maraziti, a 65-year-old former Congressman and State Senator who has spent nearly forty years in politics. Maraziti had considerable political liabilities: as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, Maraziti emerged as a staunch defender of President Richard Nixon, and his friendship with one of his congressional staffers -- female secretary with no typing skills -- received national attention.