Murray Sabrin

Despite a competitive and sometimes nasty primary fight, U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg seems to have had little trouble uniting the Democratic Party behind his re-election campaign.  There are no real signs that party leaders who backed Rob Andrews for the nomination are denying any support to the four-term Senator, and a poll released today by Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey shows Democratic voters solidly behind the Lautenberg.  The Republican candidate, former Rep. Dick Zimmer, seems to be having a little trouble getting the GOP behind his candidacy after defeating conservative State Sen. Joseph Pennacchio and Ron Paul supporter Murray Sabrin in his primary.  The poll shows that Zimmer, with 64% of the GOP vote, has not yet closed the deal on his own party.

Dick Zimmer has some catching up to do.

Across the board, fundraising figures for New Jersey’s Republican candidates for federal office look bleak, and Zimmer’s are no exception: he has about $411,000 cash on hand to go up against Frank Lautenberg, who has $1.3 million after a primary fight with Rep. Rob Andrews. 

Already, Zimmer has put $300,000 of his own money into the race.  After a press conference today on an unrelated topic, Zimmer wouldn’t say whether he plans to put any more of his own money in. 

“I have no comment on that,” Zimmer said.  “What I have said is that I can’t self-fund.”

Lautenberg can, however. 

Former Republican U.S. Senate candidate Murray Sabrin said today that he won’t run for Governor next year.

Towards the end of his Senate campaign, Sabrin said that, if he didn’t win, he would consider running for Governor to keep U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, the establishment Republicans’ favorite prospective nominee, from getting the nomination.

Reached on vacation in Alaska today, Sabrin said that he would devote his energy towards advancing his philosophy of limited government and laissez faire economic policy.

While dozens of candidates were making last minute appeals on primary day, Republican

Senate candidate Joe Pennacchio spent the afternoon working on dental fillings and root canals.  The next day, about 12 hours after congratulating rival Dick Zimmer on his victory, Pennacchio was at his Mount Arlington dental practice again, engaging in his pre and post-election routine: going to work. 

“I make a habit of working my regular job on election day and the next morning,” he said.  “It grounds me.  It tells me who I am, gets me back with the people and in the mix.”

Pennacchio, a conservative, lost to the more moderate Zimmer, 46% to 40%, with Murray Sabrin, a finance professor at Ramapo College, taking 14% of the vote.  But despite a respectable showing, Pennacchio was true to the persona he cultivated during the campaign, exemplified by his “Jersey Joe” moniker and the slogan that accompanied it: “He’s one of us!”

It's almost a month after the primary, but former Republican Senate primary candidate Murray Sabrin's unorthodox campaign continues to produce reverberations.

James Hogan, who ran for the Republican congressional nomination on Sabrin's slate in the 6th District, wrote a blog entry
excoriating the campaign for its unusual strategy and press release blitzes, which he said ultimate hurt both Sabrin and his down-ballot candidates.

Hogan placed third in the primary with a little over 1,000 votes, behind Robert McLeod, the winner, and Peter Cerrato.

Still, Hogan professes no bitter feelings towards Sabrin - just a slight feeling of bamboozlement.

Claiming to have nailed down the likely identity of someone who pretended to be him in email correspondence at the height of the Republican Primary, State GOP Chairman Tom Wilson today sent out a message to Republicans fingering a key supporter of Senate candidate Murray Sabrin.

"Efforts to trace the source of the emails were hampered by the inability of the Internet service providers to provide the details necessary," Wilson told Republicans in his email message sent today.

"However, the account was re-opened at some later point and was successfully traced to the former residence of Patrick Donohue, who owns Max Consulting in New York City," Wilson said of the early April transmissions.

Max Consulting is listed on Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports as having received more than $123,000 from the underdog campaign of Sabrin, who confirmed Donohue was the campaign’s fund-raiser.

Fresh from his U.S. Senate candidacy, newly minted Bergen County Committeeman Murray Sabrin walked into Republican Headquarters tonight to cast his vote for county chairman. 

Sabrin was accompanied by his wife, Florence, who started a freeholder bid here on Sabrin’s rebel slate before Chairman Rob Ortiz’s allies successfully challenged her petition signatures.  She is now also a county committeewoman. 

Sabrin, a Fort Lee resident, wouldn’t say who he planned to vote for, but he eliminated one of the three choices.

“Let’s put it this way: it’s not Rob Ortiz,” said Sabrin.

If Murray Sabrin’s “creative” press releases from the primary campaign were to be taken literally, the New Jersey political scene would have been ever more of a Bizarro World than it already is.

Republican Senate nominee Dick Zimmer would have been under federal investigation.  Sabrin would have been endorsed by Gannett, or rather, the corpse of newspaper mogul Frank Gannet.  Joe Pennacchio would have been a fascist.  Tom Wilson would have resigned in disgrace from his post as Republican State Chairman.  Chris Christie would not be the favorite potential GOP candidate for Governor next year.  And Sabrin, who ultimately got 14% of the vote on primary day, would have been the clear frontrunner throughout the Republican Senate race and would have won every debate he participated in.

“Throughout this campaign employed a creative strategy to try to cut through in a race where the press was paying very little attention to Murray Sabrin,” said George Ajjan, a former Republican kamikaze congressional candidate and frequent Republican pundit/blogger who worked as Sabrin’s communications director.

Ajjan was the operative who devised Sabrin’s unorthodox communications strategy that was at times clever and funny – like the time that Sabrin managed to get a blog entry on the Wall Street Journal’s Web site for letting $20,000 in campaign contributions ride in a 20-1 shot in the Kentucky Derby – but also earned ridicule from members of the Republican political establishment who bore the brunt of many of Sabrin’s press releases.

Ajjan won’t call his communications strategy misleading.  He prefers the term “creative,” and notes that the press releases went out to the press and political insiders, as opposed to the general public, which saw a polished, mild-mannered candidate with a good grasp of economic issues.

Ramapo College Professor Murray Sabrin, the leader of Ron Paul’s New Jersey presidential campaign, won 14% of the vote in his bid for the GOP U.S. Senate nomination yesterday – which was nearly three times the percentage Paul received in the February 5 New Jersey primary. Sabrin is now expected to seek the Republican nomination for Governor in 2009 (his fourth bid for statewide office), and will seek to harness the grass roots support of the Ron Paul wing of the New Jersey GOP.   That’s bad news for Steve Lonegan, the former Mayor of Bogota and the de facto leader of the state’s conservatives.  Lonegan endorsed Joseph Pennacchio on Monday, and will have a tough – though not impossible -- time convincing the Paul supporters to switch to him in a race where he can’t really afford to lose conservative/libertarian votes.

Four organization lines failed to produce pluralities for Republican U.S. Senate candidates: Gloucester, which had backed Murray Sabrin, went 47%-27% for Joseph Pennacchio; Hunterdon, which stuck with their endorsement of Pennacchio after favorite son Dick Zimmer joined the race late, went for Zimmer by a 60%-30% margin; Salem, which had endorsed Pennacchio, went for Zimmer, 47%-41%; and Somerset, where Pennacchio won the convention and line, went for Zimmer, who had represented part of the county in Congress, by a 46%-43% margin. Zimmer also won Warren County, which has no organization line but where the GOP County Chairman had endorsed Pennacchio.