ELEC’s first commissioners were a former congresswoman, a Princeton GOP leader, and two retired judges

Gov. Phil Murphy’s appointment of four new New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission commissioners comes 50 years after Gov. William Cahill picked the first four members of the newly-established panel charged with enforcing a new law requiring the public disclosure of political campaign contributions.

Cahill’s first picks were two Republicans —  former Rep. Florence Dwyer (R-Elizabeth), who had retired earlier that year after sixteen years in Congress, and Frank Reiche, a Princeton attorney and Republican Club president who had served as his Mercer County coordinator in 1969 – and two Democrats: Sidney Goldmann, a former presiding judge of the state appellate court, and former Camden County Judge Bartholomew Sheehan.

Reiche spent six years as an ELEC commissioner before being named to the Federal Election Commission in 1979.  He is the only New Jerseyan to serve on the FEC.

The shortest tenure for a commissioner was Michael Chertoff, who served from May to September, 1995.  Gov. Christine Todd Whitman nominated him after he served as U.S. Attorney; he resigned to become special counsel to the Senate Whitewater Committee that investigated real estate investments by Bill and Hillary Clinton.  Chertoff later served as a federal appeals court judge and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security.

Three commissioners served for more than a decade: David Linett, a former Somerset County Prosecutor who served from 1987 to 2000; Owen McNany, a Maplewood bank president who served from 1984 to 1986, and Andrew Axtell, a former Livingston mayor, Essex County GOP chairman and Port Authority of New York and New Jersey chairman, who served from 1979 to 1989.

Three former legislators have been ELEC commissioners: Josephine Margetts (R-Harding), whom Cahill named during the lame duck session after the Watergate landslide cost her a Morris County State Senate seat (Dwyer stepped aside to make room for her); former Assembly Majority Leader Albert Burstein (D-Tenafly), and former State Sen. Jerry Fitzgerald English (R-Summit), who had also been Gov. Brendan Byrne’s chief counsel.

Archibald Alexander, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in 1948 and 1952 –received 46%, and 44%, respectively – served as a commissioner from 1975 to 1970.  He served in the Truman Administration as U.S. Undersecretary of the Army and Gov. Robert Meyner’s State Treasurer.

Haydn Proctor,  a Republican state senator from Monmouth County and an associate justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court for sixteen years, served as an ELEC commissioner after he retired from the bench.

Power lawyer Bob DeCotiis, former New Jersey League of Women Voters President Susan Lederman, Seton Hall Law Professor Paul Franzese, Burlington County Republican State Committeewoman Lynnan Ware, and two former freeholders, Elliot Mayo of Middlesex and Bill Eldridge of Union, also served as commissioners.

Walter Timpone was a commissioner before his New Jersey Supreme Court nomination.  Eric Jaso, a former federal prosecutor who served as ELEC chairman until earlier this year, worked for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr when he investigated Clinton’s sex scandal.

Former Superior Court judges made up the bulk of ELEC commissioners: Steven Holden, Marguerite Simon, Lawrence Weiss, Theodore Davis, Stanley Bedford, Amos Saunders, and Ralph Martin.  Peter Tober, a former assistant counsel to Gov. Chris Christie, served as a commissioner before his nomination to the Superior Court; so did Alexander Waugh, Jr.