Art teacher who fought with Gov. Christie at town hall meeting is running for Assembly Watch video
Marie Corfield, an art teacher from Flemington, will be running for a shot at an Assembly seat in Tuesday's primaries. Corfield came to prominence after a heated exchange with Gov. Christie that was widely televised.TRENTON — Tuesday's primary elections for all 120 New Jersey legislative seats may not do much to shift political power in the state or its political parties, but they offer plenty of story lines.
A longtime Democratic lawmaker is being challenged from the left and has felt threatened enough that he's enlisted the help of former President Bill Clinton. A teacher lectured by Gov. Chris Christie in one of his signature YouTube moments is trying to become a lawmaker herself. And an insurgent group of Passaic County Republicans is hoping to make inroads in Trenton by winning some open seats.
"It could make for interesting spectator sport," said Patrick Murray, a Monmouth University pollster and political scientist.
In New Jersey, the real political action generally comes in the fall general elections. It's not that there's not intrigue within parties. It's just that it's often not on display on the ballots.
"A lot of the intraparty battles went on behind the scenes," said Ben Dworkin, a political scientist at Rider University.
Voters will pick candidates Tuesday for November general elections, when they'll elect one senator and two Assembly members from each of 40 districts.
There are contested races in just 10 of 40 Senate races — three Democratic and seven Republican — and 16 of 40 Assembly districts — eight for each party.
Every Senate primary features at least one sitting lawmaker. There are 11 districts where fewer than two current lawmakers are seeking Senate seats.
The wildest primary may be in the 20th District in Union County.
There, state Sen. Raymond Lesniak and Democratic Assembly members Joseph Cryan and Annette Quijano are facing party challenges. Lesniak's opponent is Jerome Dunn, a public school administrator in Elizabeth. The incumbent assembly members are being challenged by Elizabeth councilman Carlos Cedeno and former school board member Tony Monteiro, largely because of their support of a bill that would use business tax credits to attract donations that would be used to send some children to private school.
The challengers have sent several mailings.
According to the state's Election Law Enforcement Commission's reports for the entire election cycle, Lesniak and his team have responded with massive campaign spending exceeding $2.5 million, including robocalls from Clinton.
"They're not going to win," Murray said of the challengers, "but boy, they're going to make this interesting."
While contested elections aren't the norm across the state, they are for Republicans in Passaic County.
The splinter group GOP Strong, which positions itself as more conservative than the county Republican organization, has made inroads in county and municipal offices there and is trying to take some seats in Trenton.
The group is backing candidates in a half-dozen districts, all of which are dominated by Democrats. "The candidates that GOP Strong has are basically citizen candidates," said Paul Duggan, a spokesman for the group. "They don't live on patronage row."
GOP Strong's best chance of an upset in November may be in the 38th District, which was made less Republican-heavy through redistricting this year.
There, establishment Republicans are supporting Hawthorne Mayor Richard Goldberg against GOP Strong's Joseph Gant and lawyer Fernando Alonso, who has previously run for Congress and the state Senate, against GOP Strong's Scott A. Verrone. A fifth candidate is also vying for the nomination, Wojciech Siemaszkiewicz, a Polish-born New York Public Library employee who has run for the Assembly twice before.
The Republican winners in the district will face incumbent Democrat Connie Wagner and Maywood Mayor Timothy Eustace.
Pundits are also watching the Republican primaries in the 1st District in Cumberland, Cape May and Atlantic counties. That's an area where all three legislative seats are now held by Democrats, but where Republicans have an edge in voter registrations.
The county Republican organizations are backing senate candidate David DeWeese, coach of the Wildwood Catholic boys basketball team and a former municipal judge, and Assembly candidates Samuel Fiocchi, a Cumberland County freeholder, and Suzanne Walters, mayor of Stone Harbor.
They're running against three small-business owners: for the Senate, Thomas Greto; and for the Assembly, Paul Halley and Peter Boyce, who has twice run for Congress.
Two of the most prominent political newcomers in this year's primaries are unopposed.
Nine-time Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis, who lives in Medford, is trying to become a Democratic senator in the Republican-dominated 8th District in New Jersey's Philadelphia suburbs. With Republicans challenging his candidacy on grounds that he has not lived in the state for the required four years, he could be removed from the general election ballot.
Richard Kanka of Hamilton, the father of Megan Kanka, the girl whose murder led to creation of Megan's Law all over the nation, is running for the 14th District Senate seat as a Republican.
A third is Marie Corfield, a Flemington public school art teacher who is seeking the Democratic nomination for Assembly in central New Jersey's 16th District.
Last year, she challenged Christie on his cuts to schools during a town hall meeting. As he talked, she rolled her eyes and swung her head to the side. Christie didn't appreciate it.
"I stood here and very respectfully listened to you," he said. "If you want to put on a show and giggle every time I talk, I have no interest in answering your question."
The exchange got nearly 1 million hits on the governor's YouTube channel. And it's led to some media exposure for Corfield, who has appeared on Fox News Channel's "Fox and Friends" and elsewhere to talk about it.
Her platform centers on maintaining New Jersey's public schools.