Richard Hughes Archives

Broad court vacancies remain despite swell of June confirmations

July 2, 2021 5:23 pmJuly 3, 2021 6:03 pm

New Jersey lawmakers were on pace this year to appoint and reappoint more judges to the Superior Court bench than any administration since 1998, according to data from New Jersey’s Judiciary, but an extended break planned by lawmakers through November...

Sweeney/Norcross road trips continue

June 29, 2021 7:24 pmJune 29, 2021 10:13 pm

Senate President Steve Sweeney, Assembly Majority Leader Louis Greenwald and powerbroker George Norcross will continue a summer tour of meetings with Democratic lawmakers from Bergen, Essex, Mercer, Middlesex, Passaic Somerset and Union counties. The expanded schedule will follow a similar...

Five N.J. governors have avoided re-election primaries and Murphy is one of them

June 6, 2021 10:34 pm

Seeking to become the first Democratic governor to win a second term in 44 years, Gov. Phil is expected to get more than 99% of the primary election vote on Tuesday – with only a handful of write-in votes stopping...

Joe Biden’s heart wrenching story about a former N.J. governor

April 14, 2021 7:56 pmApril 15, 2021 12:03 pm

In his eulogy for fallen U.S. Capitol police officer Billy Evans on Tuesday, President Joe Biden shared a hugely personal story about former New Jersey Gov. Richard J. Hughes. Biden spoke of losing his wife and child in a car...

New Jersey governors and presidential primaries

February 15, 2021 12:13 amFebruary 14, 2021 7:02 pm

Gov. Phil Murphy was the first governor to stay out of the presidential race in 28 years, leaving Democratic county chairs — and in some cases, Democratic County Committee members — to award the organization line in the 2020 New...

Key moment for Nixon was when 18 New Jersey Republicans bolted from Case

February 15, 2021 12:12 amFebruary 13, 2021 6:27 pm

For some time, presidential primaries in New Jersey where nothing more than beauty contests where the preferred candidate of a voter was deemed so unimportant that their names did not appear on the ballot. Instead, voters had to wrote in...

Trailblazer: Marion West Higgins

February 9, 2021 12:14 amFebruary 7, 2021 9:10 pm

Marion West Higgins (1915-1991) was the first woman to serve as Speaker of the New Jersey State Assembly. The Bergen County Republican was also the first woman to serve as Assembly Majority Leader, and the first woman to serve as...