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New Jersey Sen. Lautenberg Appears Early Favorite, Despite Weak Ratings
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Candidate
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| Contributor | The Sunset Provision |
| Last Edited | The Sunset Provision Feb 23, 2007 11:53am |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Website - Yahoo News |
| News Date | Friday, February 23, 2007 05:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | As Democrats set out to defend their tenuous Senate majority in the 2008 elections, New Jersey may seem like an unlikely source of heartburn. The contest coincides with the presidential election, and New Jersey has favored the Democratic contenders for the White House in the past four elections. Plus, no Republican has won an election for the Senate in the state since incumbent Clifford P. Case in 1972.
The Democratic incumbent who is up next year, Frank R. Lautenberg, first won a Senate seat in 1982 and was re-elected in 1988 and even in the tough Democratic year of 1994. He chose to retire rather than run for re-election in 2000, but made an unexpected comeback in 2002 when he won under unusually strained circumstances — filling in after Democratic Sen. Robert G. Torricelli, facing career-threatening ethics controversies, belatedly dropped out of the race.
But Lautenberg, who turned 83 in January, has an image that is far more gruff than grandfatherly, and that has contributed to public approval ratings that are subpar as he heads into another election year.
Despite its long losing streak in Senate races, the New Jersey GOP can point to some races that they made much closer than had been expected.
In 1990, Christine Todd Whitman — who would later be elected governor three years later — forced seemingly unbeatable Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley to the wire. Lautenberg himself had to fight to hold off veteran state lawmaker Garabed “Chuck” Haytaian in 1994, while in 2000, Wall Street financier Jon Corzine (now the governor of New Jersey) just edged out Republican Rep. Bob Franks, despite spending more than $60 million of his own money on the campaign.
In an unusual statistical anomaly, all three of these races were decided by 3 percentage points, with the Democratic winner taking 50 percent and the Republican loser finishing with 47 percent
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