Richard Hughes

Superior Court Judge Harold Hollenbeck will reach the mandatory retirement age of seventy on December 29, possibly ending a career in public service that began with his election to the East Rutherford Borough Council in 1966. But some Republican insiders say that Hollenbeck could be the GOP’s strongest candidate to challenge Bergen County Executive Dennis McNerney in 2010.

Hollenbeck was elected to the State Assembly in 1967, at the age of 29, as part of a Republican sweep of Bergen County in the second mid-term election of Democratic Gov. Richard Hughes. After two terms in the Assembly, he won a State Senate seat in 1971.

Brian M. Hughes, Mercer County executive: Politicker file photo 

The Murphy-Hughes brothers’ first Democratic National Convention was the last one staged in New Jersey: 1964, Atlantic City.

It was hard to beat for drama when compared to everything that followed, with the exception of Chicago just four years later, which the brothers also both attended.

Staged a year after the assassination of John F. Kennedy and a month after Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964, the 1964 Democratic Convention featured the nomination of Johnson, of course; and a speech by Robert Kennedy, oldest surviving brother of the slain president.

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.

Robert F. Kennedy campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968

Working guard duty at Fort Dix in 1968, 22-year-old government issue Ray Lesniak counted himself a fortunate one because he didn't get shipped off to Vietnam.

"Even though I ain't no senator's son," said the senator, 40 years later now, quoting the Creedence Clearwater Revivial song lyrics from the older era.

He was into politics even then, and he liked Sen. Robert Kennedy for president.

"I was a huge supporter," he said.

For insiders like Lesniak who have been immersed in Democratic Party stand-offs for decades, the primary rumble between senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama bears traces of that 1968 match-up between establishment warhorse Hubert Humphrey and tousle-headed rock star Kennedy.

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.