Giant slayer George Nethercutt, who died on Friday morning, defeated the sitting Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Thomas Foley, in 1994.
There is, of course, a New Jersey connection.
Before Foley, another Speaker of the House to lose re-election in his home congressional district was William Pennington, a Newark Republican and freshman Republican who won the post on the 44th ballot in 1860 after eight weeks of voting.
Pennington was a big deal in New Jersey politics: the son of a former governor, he was elected to a State Assembly seat representing Essex County in 1828 on the Whig Party ticket and then served six years as governor from 1837 to 1843 after winning successive one-year terms in elections decided by the state’s Legislative Council.
He was governor during the Broad Seal War, a national controversy that erupted after Pennington certified the 1838 congressional election results in favor of six Whig candidates – New Jersey elected statewide, at-large members of the U.S. House of Representatives until 1846 – even though Democrats appeared to have won some of the seats. Control of the House hinged on New Jersey. The election was later overturned after county clerks in Middlesex and Cumberland counties were found to have suppressed election results; Middlesex was certified without any numbers from South Amboy.
In 1858, Pennington was elected to Congress as a member of the fledgling Republican Party, ousting freshman Rep. Jacob Wortendyke (D-Jersey City) by a 54%-46% margin in an Essex-Hudson district.
Two years later, Democrats ran former Assembly Speaker Nehemiah Perry (D-Newark) against Pennington. In a district that voted against Abraham Lincoln for President, Perry defeated Pennington by 400 votes, 50.6% to 49.4%.
Perry served two terms in Congress – he was re-elected with 58.6% in Lincoln’s midterm – and then returned home voluntarily. He was elected mayor of Newark in 1873.
Pennington died less than a year after leaving office of an unintentional morphine overdose.
His successor, Galhusa Grow, a party-switcher from Pennsylvania, lost re-election in 1862.