Peter Eagler, who served as an assemblyman, freeholder and councilman at the same time, dies at 69

Peter C. Eagler, a former assemblyman, Passaic County freeholder, and longtime Clifton councilman, died on May 11 after a lengthy battle with cancer.  He was 69.

During his two terms in the legislature, Eagler chaired the Assembly Regulated Professions and Independent Authorities Committee and was vice chairman of the Telecommunications and Utilities Committee.

“Of all the people I have served next to, Peter was one of my favorites and one of the hardest working leaders in our great state,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-Paterson).  “City councilor, assemblyman, county commissioner, state leader, Peter Eagler did it all and then some.”

Eagler launched his political career in 1986, running for a Clifton council seat, but lost by about 400 votes.

He ran again in 1990 when three incumbents – Lorraine Bremer, Gerald Friend, and Joseph Grecco – declined to seek re-election.

That year, James Anzaldi was the top vote-getter; by local custom, which put him in as mayor over Gloria Kolodziej, who finished third.  Eagler came in seventh, about 2,100 votes behind Anzaldi and roughly 950 votes ahead of eighth-place finisher Chuck Rohde.  Bremer’s daughter, Patricia, finished 11th.

The second-place finisher that year was former Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Martini, who later won a freeholder seat and was elected to Congress in 1994.

When he sought re-election in 1994, Eagler finished third in the ten-candidate field.

In 1996, Passaic County Democrats tapped Eagler and Paterson activist Gloria Scott to seek two freeholder seats held by Republicans.  The GOP ran incumbent Charles Delahanty and Ringwood Councilman Walter Davison, Jr., the deputy county administrator; the other incumbent, Richard DuHaime, gave up his seat to run for U.S. Senate, but lost the primary to Rep. Richard Zimmer (R-Delaware).

Republicans had a 7-0 majority going into the election.

Passaic County went heavily Democratic in 1996.

Bill Clinton carried Passaic by 21 points over Bob Dole, and Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Bob Torricelli won it by 13 points.   In that election, Paterson Mayor/Assemblyman Bill Pascrell was elected to Congress, carrying the Passaic County portion of the district by a 54%-45% margin against freshman Rep. Bill Martini (R-Clifton).

In her bid for re-election in 1999, Scott and Eagler faced a primary challenge from former Paterson school board member Nilda Torres.  The incumbents won the primary by a margin of nearly 4-1.

Scott and Eagler defeated the Republican candidates, Clifton Councilman Jack Welsh and former freeholder Jack O’Brien, in the general election by a wide margin.  Eagler received about 1,000 more votes than Scott, who ran about 5,000 votes ahead of Welsh and 6,000 ahead of O’Brien.

He easily won re-election to his Clifton council seat in 1998, and held on to his freeholder seat in 1999 by a margin of over 6,000 votes; he was again the top vote-getter against Republicans Edward Welsh, a Clifton councilman and former Democrat, and former freeholder Jack O’Brien.   Passaic Councilman (and future mayor) Sammy Rivera ran as an independent write-in candidate.  Eagler became freeholder director in 2001 after a contest with fellow Democrat James Gallagher.

In 2001, Eagler considered a bid for State Senate in the 34th district, which then went from Clifton to Wayne and had been held by Republicans for two decades.  The Republican incumbent was State Sen. Norman Robertson (R-Clifton), a former freeholder who had ousted GOP incumbent Joseph Bubba (R-Wayne) in the 1997 primary.

But legislative redistricting substantially altered the 34th, putting Clifton in a district with East Orange and Montclair and flipping a likely Republican district to a safe Democratic one under a new map.

Democrats ran Assemblywoman Nia Gill (D-Montclair) against Robertson and teamed up Eagler and Willis Edwards III, the East Orange Housing Commission chairman and a cousin of Rep. Donald Payne, Sr., to run for Assembly.

Eagler was the top vote-getter in a seven-candidate primary field, receiving more than three times the votes of the third-place finisher.   In the general election, Eagler unseated nine-term Republican Assemblyman Gerald Zecker (R-Clifton), a former Clifton mayor, by a margin of nearly 2-1, 31,623 to 16,306.

From January 2002 until January 2006, Eagler was a triple-dipper: he served simultaneously as a councilman, freeholder, and assemblyman.  He was the last person to hold a municipal, county, and state elected office at the same time.

He was re-elected to the Passaic County Board of Freeholders in 2002, and was easily re-elected councilman in 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2018; health issues led to his retirement from the Clifton council in 2022.

The Essex County Democratic organization tossed Gill from their ticket in 2003 and backed former Assemblyman LeRoy Jones, Jr. (D-East Orange) for Senate; they also withdrew party support for Edwards and replaced him with former Essex County Freeholder Sheila Oliver, who had come within 51 votes of winning the 1997 Democratic primary for mayor of East Orange and then lost a 2001 Senate primary to Gill.

While Gill narrowly edged out Jones for the Senate, Eagler and Oliver defeated Gill’s Assembly candidates, Helyn Baltimore and J. Howard Solomon, by roughly 1,500 votes In the general election, Eagler and Oliver defeated Republicans Keith Krebs and Ken Kurson.

Eagler’s time in the legislature ran out in 2005 when Essex County Democrats reclaimed the second Assembly seat in the 34th district and ran the venerable Thomas P. Giblin (D-Montclair), a former New Jersey Democratic State Chairman and Essex County Democratic Chairman.

He had initially planned to seek a third term, running off the line, but his campaign imploded after a political news site, PoliticsNJ, reported that he had teamed up with Rev. Clenard Childress without realizing that Childress was pro-life and anti-gay.

Earlier that year, Passaic County Democrats decided to drop Eagler from their county ticket and replace him with Bruce James, a union leader.

“I have always admired Peter’s commitment to Poland and to the Polish American community, which is so integral to New Jersey’s beautiful quilt of communities. His sense of civic responsibility to our Clifton community was bottomless, his dedication to helping others was tireless,” Pascrell said.  “I send my love and respect to his family and everyone else who knew Peter. I am in real mourning today.”

Eagler had worked at the Garden State Parkway Authority before joining the legislature.  He graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson University with a degree in Political Science and Russian studies.

He is survived by his sister.

Visitation will be held on Wednesday, May 15 from 4-9 PM at the Shook Funeral Home in Clifton, and from 4-7 PM on Thursday, May 16 at the Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church in Wayne.  A funeral service is scheduled for 7 PM that evening at the church.