The minority leader of the New Jersey State Senate wants Gov. Phil Murphy to appoint a caretaker if Bob Menendez resigns his seat in the U.S. Senate and not the Democratic nominee, Rep. Andy Kim.
Anthony Bucco, the Senate Republican leader, says a Kim appointment would “put the thumb on the scale — benefiting one candidate before an election, and further eroding what little trust the public still has in its officials after Senator Menendez’s conviction.”
Kim faces Republican Curtis Bashaw — and Menendez, still on the ballot as an independent — in the general election.
“New Jersey has to end the special insider deals that got us here, said Bucco. “I’m urging Governor Murphy to do the right thing, appoint a trusted and respected leader as a placeholder, and let the voters have their say this November without interference.”
Bucco said Murphy should follow the model set by then-Gov. Chris Christie, who appointed an interim senator, Jeff Chiesa after the 2013 death of Frank R. Lautenberg, “which allowed a fair and honest election to play out for voters.”
In reality, Christie didn’t want to make a play for an open Senate seat in the year he was up for re-election. He passed on potential candidates who might have been competitive in a special election – and notably forced a separate, free-standing vote in October rather than risk having another running mate when he was on the ballot the following month.
The model was not Christie’s, but rather one set in 1982 by another Republican governor, Tom Kean, after four-term U.S. Senator Harrison Williams, Jr. resigned in 1982. Williams, a Democrat, was indicted for his role in the Abscam scandal in 1980 and found guilty of bribery on May 1, 1981, but maintained his innocence and refused to resign from the Senate until the morning that his colleagues were preparing to expel him.
That gave Kean, in office for less than two months, the chance to appoint a Republican to the U.S. Senate.
This wasn’t an easy decision for the fledgling governor: Rep. Millicent Fenwick (R-Bernardsville) and conservative Jeff Bell, a former Reagan speechwriter who had beaten a four-term incumbent in the 1978 GOP Senate primary, were already in the race. A third candidate, Rep. Jim Courter (R-Allamuchy), was also mulling a U.S. Senate bid and had scheduled his announcement in a few days; he decided not to run.
Kean’s top strategist, Roger Stone, brought Bell and Courter to the Kean campaign as co-chairs, a move that brought a conservative seal of approval for the moderate Kean in the Republican gubernatorial primary. Stone’s move to install Bell as the titular leader of Kean’s campaign played a significant role in Kean securing the nomination.
Fenwick, the colorful, pipe-smoking inspiration for a Doonesbury character, had remained neutral in the gubernatorial primary; she and Kean were old friends, even though they ran against each other for an open House seat in a 1974 primary (Fenwick won by 83 votes). She had considerable support among national and state Republicans.
The U.S. Senate seat was left vacant for over a month as Kean continued mulling his options. He invited over 100 Republican officeholders and community leaders to offer their recommendations, giving out a private code on the outside of an envelope to assure that only the governor would open those letters.
In the meantime, Fenwick and Bell competed at county GOP conventions for organization endorsements.
Rather than give one of the candidates the advantage of incumbency in the primary and general elections, Kean decided to go with a caretaker. He picked Nicholas Brady, a Wall Street banker, and old friend who had headed his gubernatorial transition to be nomination interim U.S. Senator.