New Jersey
District 9
Rep. Steven Rothman (D)
New Jersey 9th District
Rep. Steven Rothman (D)
The George Washington Bridge, one of several wondrous suspension bridges completed in America in the 1930s, strides the Hudson River, its west tower almost up against the green cliffs of New Jersey’s Palisades. It is one of the glories of modern engineering, enabling people and goods to be transported through the irregular terrain of metropolitan New York—tidal rivers and cliffs and broad expanses of swamp. For a century, the dramatic beauty of the Palisades contrasted with the sprawl of the Hackensack River Valley and the Jersey Meadowlands not far to the west, which conveyed the image of New Jersey for many—a landscape of gas station signs, oil tank farms, truck terminals, and 12 lanes of New Jersey Turnpike. The Meadowlands, once 8,400 acres of wetlands and home to thousands of species of animals and plants, was developed in the 1970s. The state built in East Rutherford the Meadowlands Sports Complex—Giants Stadium, where the Giants and Jets play; the Meadowlands Racetrack; the Brendan Byrne Arena, later Continental Airlines Arena. Private development followed—hotels, warehouses, light industry, shopping centers—in what became a small city. Now, a generation later, the state is building a new $1.6 billion stadium at the Meadowlands for the National Football League’s Giants and Jets. The nearby $2 billion Xanadu retail and entertainment center was scheduled to open in late 2009.
2008 Presidential Vote |
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| Obama | 158,911 | (61%) |
| McCain | 99,129 | (38%) |
| Cook Partisan Voting Index D+ 9 | ||
The 9th Congressional District of New Jersey includes much of the Palisades and the Meadowlands. The scenery here is familiar to fans of the cable television series The Sopranos: Jersey City, Kearny, North Arlington, Lodi, which is home to the fictitious Bada Bing strip club. The 9th takes in the high-rise towers of Fort Lee, Cliffside Park, and fast-growing Edgewater, where dwellers in luxury apartment houses brag about their views of New York City. It goes west and north to the leafy suburbs of Englewood and Teaneck, and southwest to the high land overlooking the Meadowlands and the Passaic River. Old towns like Rutherford have enclaves of Polish-, German-, and Italian-Americans. Blue-collar Palisades Park has Korean-Americans. Teaneck and Englewood are home to middle-class blacks and young, Orthodox Jewish families.
Fairview, Bergenfield, and Hackensack, an old industrial town and the Bergen County seat, are home to growing numbers of Hispanics. The county has about 80% of the district’s voters. This was a growth area in the 1950s and 1960s, as New Yorkers moved out of the city. It lost population in the 1970s and 1980s, as young people moved farther out and left empty nesters behind. Now the population in some towns is rising because of new immigrants. From 2000 to 2007, the Hispanic population in Bergen County grew more than 40% to 130,000. In 2008, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama won 54% of the vote in Bergen, and won the district 61%-38%.
New Jersey District 9
Rep. Steven Rothman (D)
Elected: 1996, 7th term.
Born: Oct. 14, 1952, Englewood .
Home: Fair Lawn.
Education: Syracuse U., B.A. 1974, Washington U., J.D. 1977.
Religion: Jewish.
Family: Married (Jennifer); 5 children.
Elected office: Englewood mayor, 1983–89; Bergen Cnty. Surrogate Court judge, 1993–96.
Professional Career: Practicing atty., 1978–93.
The congressman from the 9th District is Steve Rothman, a Democrat first elected in 1996. Rothman grew up in Englewood and Tenafly, the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Russia, Poland, and Austria. His father was a tool and die maker but later found industrial real estate to be more profitable. Rothman went to school at Syracuse University and Washington University law school in St. Louis, and then practiced law. From 1983 to 1989, he was mayor of Englewood. In 1993, he became a judge in the Bergen County Surrogate’s Court. When Democrat Bob Torricelli ran for the Senate in 1996, Rothman resigned his judgeship to run for Torricelli’s House seat. With the party endorsement, Rothman faced Republican Kathleen Donovan, a former Bergen County clerk, state assemblywoman, and chairwoman of the New York-New Jersey Port Authority. She was endorsed by the New Jersey Education Association. But this part of New Jersey swung sharply to the Democrats after Republicans won control of Congress in 1994. The 9th District voted overwhelmingly for Bill Clinton for president that year, and voted 56%-42% for Rothman.
| Election Results: | ||||
| 2008 General | ||||
| Steven Rothman (D) | 151,182 | (68%) | ($1,288,656) | |
| Vincent Micco (R) | 69,503 | (31%) | ($34,363) | |
| 2008 Primary | ||||
| Steven Rothman (D) | Unopposed | |||
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Prior Winning Percentages: 2006 (71%), 2004 (68%), 2002 (70%), 2000 (68%), 1998 (65%), 1996 (56%) |
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In the House, Rothman often has been more liberal on economic issues than on foreign-policy and defense issues. He voted for the Iraq war resolution in 2002, although in 2007 he backed a deadline for withdrawal of U.S. forces. The House in June 2007 passed, 411-2, his resolution condemning Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for calling for the destruction of Israel.
On local issues, his most innovative work has been to limit further development of the Meadowlands and to get protections for environmentally sensitive areas. He secured $5.2 million to help create an 8,400-acre state park in the one-third of the Meadowlands that had not been developed. “From an industrial waste dump to a nature preserve,” is how Rothman describes the project. He fought proposals to expand the Teterboro Airport in the Meadowlands, and in 2003 the House approved his provision to ban noisy 737s at Teterboro. In 2006, he brokered a noise-control agreement for the airport, including a weight limit for jets and overnight curfews on flights.
Rothman’s district work naturally includes pitching for transportation dollars, including for projects to relieve ever-congested Route 17. On the Appropriations Committee, he has secured money for commuter rail projects in Bergen County, to expand public transportation into and out of Manhattan, and to clean up pollution in the Passaic River. Rothman also authored a bill, passed by Congress, that creates federal grants for better security in public schools, including for metal detectors, security cameras, and security training. He has obtained $50 million for the program in recent years. He often takes an interest in issues related to veterans benefits, and has been pushing to restore Bush-era cuts that eliminated health care benefits to veterans who fail to qualify as low income.
Rothman has won re-election by wide margins, and has ambitions to run for the Senate.
