Ending another campaign in defeat, Caliguire drops out of Assembly race

After another resounding defeat – his second in four months and the eighth of his career, Todd Caliguire announced today that he would “accept the will of the majority” and not challenge Assemblyman Bob Auth (R-Oradell) and Saddle River Councilman John Azzariti in the Republican primary.

At Tuesday’s 39th district Bergen GOP mini-convention, Azzariti defeated Caliguire by 50 votes, 159 to 109, for the open seat of DeAnne DeFuccio (R-Upper Saddle River). Auth was the top vote-getter with 216 votes. DeFuccio, elected in 2021, is not seeking re-election.

“I ran for State Assembly simply because I am concerned about the kind of country and state in which our children and grandchildren will live,” Caliguire said in a statement.  “At this critical moment in history, we must fight with everything we have to restore government to the values and principles which made our nation great.  There can be no compromise on this.”

This could be the end of the road for Caliguire, who turns 68 in May and hasn’t won an election since his second term as a Bergen County Freeholder in 1995.  In a bid for Bergen County Executive in 2022, Democrat James Tedesco beat him by more than eleven percentage points.

A Sears catalog fashion model-turned-lawyer, Caliguire worked for Gov. Tom Kean and Attorney General Cary Edwards in the 1980s.  He wanted to challenge freshman Rep. Bob Torricelli (D-Englewood) in 1984 and run for county executive in 1986, but Bergen County Republicans went in different directions each time.  He’s also lost to races for State Senate and finished last in the 2005 Republican gubernatorial primary with 2.47% of the vote.

Caliguire remains haunted by his 2007 Senate primary against then-Assemblyman Kevin O’Toole (R-Cedar Grove), where Caliguire sent out a xenophobic mailer that ran side-by-side photos of O’Toole, who was the state’s first Asian American legislator, and Rev. Al Sharpton, alleging that O’Toole was “the Republican Al Sharpton.”

“Democrats like Al Sharpton have divided America with their fixation on race and affirmative action,” the mailer stated.  “Now Kevin O’Toole is guilty of the same thing.”

O’Toole referenced the mailer in a column on Asian hate he wrote for the New Jersey Globe in March 2021.

“The not-so-silent hand of racism would rear its ugliness when my opponent, in a blatant effort to stir racial waves, sent a mailer of me and Reverend Al Sharpton, referring to us as Affirmative Action babies,” he said.

Caliguire’s campaign manager, Kevin Collins, defended their messaging in an interview with The (Bergen) Record.

“We could have altered the photo.  We did not,” Collins told The Record. “We could have made a more jaundiced look to his skin.  We did not.”

The Republican State Chairman at the time, Tom Wilson, smacked Caliguire for race-baiting.

“This mail piece and tactics like it have no place in a Republican primary,” he told The Record.  “This kind of mail is frankly despicable and seeks to create division where none should exist.”

O’Toole, then a six-term assemblyman, beat Caliguire by 13 points, even carrying the Bergen County portion of the 40th legislative district while running off-the-line in a race for an open State Senate seat.  It remains one of the few times the Bergen GOP organization line didn’t hold.