Vincent Murphy

It's tough to stump Steve Adubato, Sr. on political trivia, especially when the question is about Newark politics.  And The Inside Edge should have know better than to ask him to name the last Mayor of Newark to run statewide.  Adubato had no trouble coming up with the name of Vincent Murphy, who was the Democratic candidate for Governor in 1943; Murphy lost to Republican Walter Edge by nearly 147,000 votes.  (Murphy lost his bid for re-election to a third term as Mayor in 1949, and served as President of the New Jersey AFL-CIO from 1961 to 1970.)  

Adubato told PolitickerNJ.com's Max Pizarro that "no Mayor of Newark ever succeeded statewide. They either went to jail or oblivion."  He's right.

Look at Theodore Frelinghuysen, a member of one of New Jersey's premier political families.  Frelinghuysen was elected to the U.S. Senate (on his second try) in 1828, at age 41, but lost his bid for re-election six years later.  In 1837, he won a two-year term as Mayor of Newark -- the last election he would ever win. Frelinghuysen, the great-great-great-uncle of U.S. Rep. Rodney Frelyinghuysen, was the Whig candidate for Vice President on Henry Clay's ticket in 1844 and lost to Democrats James Polk and George Dallas -- although the did carry New Jersey, with 50.5% of the vote.

The last seven Mayors of Newark -- going back more than seventy years -- were defeated in their bids for re-election. The incumbent, Sharpe James, ousted four-term incumbent Kenneth Gibson in 1986. Gibson had unseated Mayor Hugh Addonizio in 1970. Addonizio defeated Mayor Leo Carlin 1958; Carlin won in 1953 over Mayor Ralph Villani, who had won office four years earlier after upsetting Mayor Vincent Murphy. In 1941, Murphy was elected Mayor in a close race with incumbent Meyer Ellenstein, who had defeated Mayor Jerome Congleton eight years before. Congleton had become Mayor in 1928 when the incumbent, Thomas Raymond, passed away.