Robert C. Shelton, Jr., the last Sussex County Democrat to serve in the New Jersey State Assembly, died on June 9. He was 89.
As a one-term assemblyman, Shelton co-sponsored the constitutional amendment to allow casino gambling in Atlantic City. He successfully championed repealing a state law requiring county clerks to pay a $5 bounty for foxes or groundhogs that were killed. Before that, hunters needed to bring the ears of the foxes and groundhogs to the county clerk’s office.
Shelton was named chairman of the Assembly State Government Committee in 1975 after Jim Florio left the legislature to become a congressman. He voted in favor of establishing a state income tax.
One of New Jersey’s Watergate babies, Shelton was a former prosecutor and Superior Court judge.
He served as the First Assistant Sussex County Prosecutor from 1963 to 1973, when he resigned to run for assemblyman in the newly-draw 15th legislative district, which included Sussex and Warren counties and part of Passaic. He was 39 when he ran for the Assembly.
The 1973 Watergate landslide gave Democrats victories in unimaginable places, especially in an election just seventeen years after President Nixon fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox in what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre. On Election Day, Democrat Brendan Byrne was elected with 67% of the vote, and Republicans were left with ten Senate seats and fourteen seats in the Assembly.
Three-term incumbent Robert Littell (R-Franklin) finished first but just 143 votes ahead of Shelton. Another assemblyman Walter Keough-Dwyer (R-Vernon), lost re-election, trailing Shelton by 3,797 votes. Shelton’s running mate, Peter Karis, came in fourth, 5,515 votes behind Littell.
Keough-Dwyer had survived a primary challenge against John A. Lance, the former elected Washington Township tax collector, after internal fights with Republican leaders led him to lose some party support.
Against Keough-Dwyer, Shelton carried Sussex by 1,811 votes, Warren by 1,614, and Passaic by 372. He had sought the Republican nomination for Congress in 1972, but lost to State Sen. Joseph Maraziti (R-Boonton) by a 50%-25% margin.
In that election, Byrne took 62% in Sussex and 74% in Warren over Republican Charles W. Sandman, Jr., a conservative congressman from Cape May who had outed incumbent Gov. William Cahill in the GOP primary. Also in the 15th district, State Sen. Wayne Dumont (R-Phillipsburg), a former Senate President and gubernatorial candidate, won his seventh term with 55% against Democrat Martin Murphy, a municipal prosecutor from West Milford.
As an Assembly candidate, Shelton opposed the controversial Tocks Island Dam project and the inclusion of an Abortion plank in the Democratic State Committee’s 1973 platform. With State Sen. Joseph Merlino (D-Trenton), Shelton sponsored legislation banning using Medicaid dollars for abortions.
He became immediately known in Trenton when he drove a camper to the statehouse the afternoon before Byrne’s inauguration in January 1974. He used it as a hotel room before heading to watch the new governor take office.
Shelton’s legislation to force fishermen to wear their licenses in a conspicuous place was passed by the Assembly, but State Sen. John Russo (D-Toms River) killed it in the Senate.
Citing the need to spend more time with his family and law practice and eying a nearly impossible campaign to hold his seat, Shelton announced in March 1975 that he would not seek re-election to a second term in the Assembly.
“I have enjoyed my term, and I hope that I will leave office having achieved a measure of good, but I have found that fulfilling the obligations of my elected office and my commitments to clients and my law practice has required me to be remiss in my greater obligations to my family, especially my children,” Shelton said in a statement announcing his plans. “They are young, and they deserve a much greater portion of my life than I have been able to give to them.”
Republicans indeed flipped Shelton’s seat, albeit narrowly — one of seventeen pickups in Byrne’s 1975 midterm election.
Donald Albanese (R-Belvidere) defeated Murphy, the 1973 Senate candidate, by 965 votes.
(Albanese’s road to the Assembly was complicated. He had lost an Assembly bid in 1967 and was defeated in the June 1975 Republican Assembly primary by 947 votes against Clifton Lawrence, the Sussex-Wantage Regional School District superintendent. But the 62-year-old Lawrence died of a heart attack while mowing his lawn four days after the GOPP primary; Albanese became the replacement candidate.)
In 1975, Byrne nominated Shelton to serve as a Superior Court judge; he replaced James M. Barry, who had retired. With Dumont’s signoff, the Senate unanimously confirmed Shelton in December. He completed the remainder of his Assembly term and took office as a judge in January 1976.
After retiring from the bench in 1985, Shelton practiced law in his hometown of Ogdensburg and later served as Vernon’s township attorney. He just recently retired from his law practice.
Shelton had been a longtime Ogdensburg volunteer firefighter.
He was a 1955 graduate of Seton Hall University and graduated first in his class at Seton Hall Law School in 1958, receiving the John Kean Award for Scholastic Achievement.
Shelton is survived by his son, three daughters, ten grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by his son, Robert. His family will receive friends from 3-7 PM at the F. John Ramey Funeral Home in Franklin, followed by a Mass at noon Monday at the Good Shephard R.C. Church in Andover.