Former State Sen. James H. Wallwork, an unswerving, principled conservative Republican from Essex County who was a beacon of ethics and a careful watchdog of public dollars during his sixteen years in the New Jersey Legislature and his two runs for governor, died on October 23 at his home in Maryland. He was 94.
Widely viewed as a “Boy Scout,” during his time in the legislature, Wallwork had built a reputation for rigid integrity and a commitment to keeping the cost of government under control. Fiercely independent, Wallwork didn’t hesitate to stand up to governors from both parties. He used to return 10% of his salary to the Senate and used his own money to offer prizes to state employees who suggested the best ways to save taxpayer dollars.
An exceptional retail campaigner, Wallwork was known for handing out potholders at supermarkets.
As a legislator, Wallwork was an early advocate for recycling, supported the Pinelands Preservation Act, and wrote the law to establish New Jersey’s first Advanced Life Support ambulances and EMS care. He supported the death penalty and tough, mandatory prison sentences for people convicted of gun-related crimes.
Wallwork was one of two living members of the Senate Class of 1967 – the first Senate elected following a 1966 Constitutional Convention formed under court order to reapportion the legislature following the U.S. Supreme Court’s One Man, One Vote decision. Only Frank Guarini (D-Jersey City), who turned 100 last summer, survives.
A West Point graduate and U.S. Army veteran, Wallwork was 33 when he won a State Assembly seat in 1963, when Essex had nine lower house seats, all elected in countywide elections. Democrats had won eight lowe house seats in 1961 — C. Robert Sarcone (R-Newark) was the lone Republican winner – and the GOP was looking to pick up seats in Democratic Gov. Richard Hughes’ midterm election. Wallwork had served as Sarcone’s legislative aide in the Assembly.
Wallwork, who was living in Montclair, finished seventh in a field of 40 candidates for the nine Assembly seats. Republicans won five of the nine seats, with three Democratic assemblymen unseated; Wallwork received 2,185 votes more than the tenth-place candidate, incumbent John Miller (D-Irvington). Sarcone won a Senate seat that year, defeating Assembly Speaker Elmer Matthews (D-South Orange).
In his bid for a second term in 1965, Hughes carried Essex County by 69,749 votes, 61%-37%, against Republican Wayne Dumont. On Hughes’s coattails, Democrats swept all nine seats – among the winners were future Senate President Pat Dodd and future Essex County Sheriff John F. Cryan – and Wallwork lost.
But two years later, the Short Hills Republican came back as a candidate for State Senate. He was the top vote-getter in a hotly-contested Republican primary for six Essex Senate seats, all elected at-large.
Republicans fought a fierce primary battle between two feuding factions.
An off-the-line reform slate of Wallwork, former Newark Housing Authority Chairman Alexander Matturrri, former Livingston Mayor David Dowd, former Assemblyman Gerardo Del Tufo (R-Newark), Acting Essex County Superintendent of Weights and Measures Michael Giuliano, and former Newark South Ward Republican Municipal Chairman Milton Waldor advanced through a tough GOP primary.
Wallwork was the top vote-getter in that primary. Just 156 votes separated Waldor from the seventh-place finisher, Frederic Remington. Remington later became the Essex County Republican Chairman and a two-term Assemblyman. Among the defeated candidates in that race were former Assemblyman (and future Attorney General) Irwin Kimmelman, former Assemblyman Frank Bate (R-Essex Fells), and future Essex County College President J. Harry Smith.
In the general election, Republicans swept all six Senate seats in what became a strong GOP year statewide. Four Democratic incumbents, including John Giblin, lost re-election.
Wallwork held his Senate seat in 1971, the last election where Essex senators ran countywide. He finished third in of fourteen candidates for five seats. Democrats won three of the five Essex Senate seats – only Wallwork and Giuliano were re-elected. Ralph DeRose (D-South Orange) and Frank “Pat” Dodd (D-West Orange) won, and Wynona Lipman (D-Montclair) ousted Walder by 908 votes for the fifth seat. They also defeated a full slate of Essex Bipartisan Independents headed by Giblin.
Despite the Watergate wave of 1973, Wallwork held his seat by a 54%-46%, 4,774-vote margin against Roseland Councilman Joel Wasserman. The Assembly Speaker, Thomas Kean, was his running mate in the newly-drawn 25th district, which extended from Millburn to Wayne and included parts of Essex, Morris, and Passaic counties.
In 1977, he defeated Lewis Paper, a former U.S. Senate staffer, by 12,241 votes, a 61%-39% margin.
During his fourteen years in the Senate, Wallwork served as Minority Whip and Assistant Minority Leader.
Following the retirement of Rep. Peter H.B. Frelinghuysen (R-Harding) in 1974, Wallwork mulled a run for Congress.
Wallwork sought the Republican nomination for governor twice. He finished fourth in an eight-candidate field in 1981 and third in a five-candidate race in 1993.
While campaigning for governor in 1981, Wallwork appeared to be the victim of a frightening assassination attempt at a veterans hospital in East Orange. Unbeknownst to Wallwork, the hospital’s security director had devised the hoax to gain attention.
He considered entering the GOP primary for U.S. Senate in 1982 after the Democratic incumbent, Harrison Williams, was convicted of bribery in the Abscam scandal.
Gov. Christine Todd Whitman nominated Wallwork as New Jersey’s Commissioner of the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor.
A graduate of Montclair High School, Wallwork graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1952; he was 13th in his class. He commanded a combat engineering battalion in the Army of Occupation in Germany; after departing the Army as a second lieutenant, he served more than ten years on the New Jersey National Guard, retiring with the rank of major. He graduated from the General Staff War College, graduating first in his class in 1960.
A successful businessman, Wallwork owned Wallwork Brothers, an HVAC supply business.
As a young assemblyman in 1965, he married Lark Lataner, a newspaper reporter who had been assigned to write a profile of Wallwork; she accompanied him to Trenton for an Assembly session two days after their wedding so he wouldn’t miss any votes, and then went to Jamaica for a honeymoon. Lark Wallwork, who played an active role in her husband’s campaigns — she assembled an extensive newspaper supplement that he used in his Senate races — died in September, 32 days before her husband.
Wallwork is survived by his daughter, Lyric Winik, his two grandsons, Nathaniel and Evan, and his two nephews.
Editor’s note: David Wildstein, the editor of the New Jersey Globe, was a legislative aide to Wallwork in the early 1970s, starting at age 12. It was his first job in New Jersey politics, with an annual salary of $100.