Dennis O. Dowd, the affable son of a state senator from Livingston, who went on to become a hugely influential figure in New Jersey’s horse racing industry and as West Orange council president, died on June 23. He was 77.
While still in high school, Dowd worked as a groom at Monmouth Park Racetrack, where his uncle, Bernie Dowd, was a horse trainer.
After attending Rutgers University, where he studied pre-veterinary medicine and animal husbandry, and Seton Hall Law School, the 29-year-old Dowd sought a seat on the West Orange council. Incumbents Ben Spinelli and Harry Bonnett were re-elected, and Dowd captured an open seat by about 1,900 votes against Jack Skarbnik and two others in a May non-partisan municipal election.
Three months earlier, his brother, David Dowd, Jr., was stabbed to death outside a discotheque in West Orange while trying to break up a fight. His alleged killers — one of them became the alleged boss of the Jersey Crew, a part of the Luchchese crime family– were acquitted.
When Dowd sought a second term as a councilman in 1980, he was the top vote-getter; Spinelli and Bonnett did not run again, and Dowd was elected with Joseph J. Brennan, Jr., and Anthony Minnitti, the nephew of Essex County GOP Chairman John Renna. They defeated two others, including Toby Katz, who had run against Dowd in 1976; in 1980, Dowd led Katz by almost 2,000 votes.
In 1981, Dowd challenged incumbent Renee Lane in the Democratic primary for the Essex County District 4 freeholder seat. Lane had won three years earlier on a slate with Peter Shapiro, who had mounted an insurgency campaign that toppled the Essex Democratic organization in the first county executive primary. Dowd had the county line and defeated Lane by about 1,500 votes, a margin of 56% to 44%.
Dowd faced a close race against Republican Monroe Jay Lustbader, a Short Hills attorney, after some Lane supporters refused to back him in the general election. He also faced the coattails of Republican gubernatorial candidate Thomas H. Kean, whose hometown of Livingston was in the Freeholder District 4. Lustbader defeated Dowd by about 1,700 votes, a margin of 51.6% to 48.4%.
In 1984, Dowd declined to seek a third term on the West Orange Township Council. Katz, whom he had beaten in 1976 and 1980, won Dowd’s seat.
He served as attorney for the Horsemen’s Protective and Benevolent Association of New Jersey for twelve years and became a real estate developer.
Kean nominated Dowd to a seat on the New Jersey Racing Commission in early 1989. After Democrat Jim Florio became governor the following year, Dowd became commission chairman.
In 1991, Dowd gave up his seat to become the president of Freehold Raceway. In 1996, Bally’s hired Dowd to help them rescue the Dover Downs racetrack in Delaware.
The New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority hired Dowd to serve as vice president and director of racing in 2004. He played a key role in bringing the prestigious Breeders’ Cup to New Jersey. Later, he became senior vice president of legal and government affairs.
In 2015, Dowd became a municipal court judge in West Orange and was appointed as the chief judge.
His father, a Republican, was a West Orange native who played minor league baseball for the New York Yankees organization for eleven games in 1942 before enlisting in the U.S. Army during World War II. He later attended law school and was elected to the Livingston Township Committee in 1955, followed by a seat on the township council in 1956, the first election held after residents approved a township manager form of government. Dowd was elected to the New Jersey State Senate in 1967; among he incumbent Democrats he defeated was John J. Giblin, the father of Thomas P. Giblin.
Dennis Dowd is survived by his wife of 53 years, Mary, his two sons, and four grandchildren. His daughter, Molly, died last year.
A Mass will be celebrated on July 2 at 11:00 a.m. at Our Lady of the Valley Church in Orange.
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