Talk about a guy who was always at the wrong place at the wrong time

The political career of Harold Pareti, a very good natured and popular Bergen County Republican who died on Monday at the age of 85, was ended by the Watergate scandal. Pareti, the longtime Mayor of Carlstadt, was elected to the State Assembly in 1971. He lost his bid for a second term by a wide margin in a Democratic landslide that cost the GOP fourteen Senate seats and 25 Assembly seats in an election that came less than two weeks after the Saturday Night Massacre -- President Richard Nixon's firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. He was unseated by Democrat Robert Hollenbeck, the cousin of the Harold Hollenbeck, the Republican State Senator from that district.

(Side story: The two leaders of the Bergen GOP, Nelson Gross and Anthony Statile, denied party support to Hollenbeck, who wanted to run for a second term. Hollenbeck, never much of a warrior, dropped his bid for re-election on an insurgent slate when Gross offered him a deal -- the organization line for a seat on the Board of Freeholders. Hollenbeck lost that race in the '73 landslide.)

The following year, Pareti ran against five-term Democratic Congressman Henry Helstoski.  (Pareti and Helstoski were old classmates -- they both graduated from East Rutherford High School in 1940.) 1974 was worse for Republicans that 1973 and Pareti lost by a 2-1 margin. Helstoski, fighting allegations of ethical improprieties, lost his seat in 1976 to Cappy Hollenbeck. Pareti ran for the State Senate in 1977 against popular Democratic incumbent Anthony Scardino and lost.