Jersey New Jersey at a Glance State Profile - Gov. Whitman (R) - Sen. Lautenberg (D) - Sen. Torricelli (D) Presidential Politics Congressional Districting - 01 - Andrews (D) - 02 - LoBiondo (R) - 03 - Saxton (R) - 04 - Smith (R) - 05 - Roukema (R) - 06 - Pallone (D) - 07 - Franks (R) - 08 - Pascrell Jr. (D) - 09 - Rothman (D) - 10 - Payne (D) - 11 - Frelinghuysen (R) - 12 - Holt (D) - 13 - Menendez (D) Almanac 2000 Home States & Districts Elected Officials For district profiles and additional information on the elected officials of New Jersey, please use the pull-down menu above.

There are few urban spaces that have been more ravaged than Camden, New Jersey. Across the Delaware River from Philadelphia's skyline, its closely built streets were jammed with immigrants in the 19th Century, when poet Walt Whitman lived here. In 1894, a Camden machinist named Eldridge Johnson produced the Victor Talking Machine--the birth of the company that became RCA Victor in 1929. In 1897, Camden was the site of the invention of condensed soup, and the Campbell Soup Company was founded soon afterwards. Thus Camden became a major industrial locus on the Jersey side of the Delaware River, not the broadest and certainly not the most picturesque of our Atlantic estuaries, but probably the East Coast's premier industrial waterway, with a concentration of steel factories, chemical plants and oil tank farms equal to any in the country. The flat lands of South Jersey all around, ignored in the 19th Century, had easy access to cheap water transport and plenty of skilled labor from the Philadelphia area. For a quarter-century starting in the 1940s, they became one of the country's fastest-growing industrial areas. Now, Camden has tended to empty out, many of its factories closed, its neighborhoods beset by crime, its local government so incompetent the state was moving toward a takeover. But the local Cooper's Ferry Development Corporation has developed a riverfront park, with the New Jersey Aquarium and the Sony Music/Pace amphitheater, that takes advantage of Camden's site and attracts multiracial crowds; an aerospace complex and a Campbell Soup office tower have gone up. Still, city government and crime remain major impediments to Camden making additional strides.

The 1st Congressional District is, more or less, greater Camden, the Delaware riverfront from Riverton south to a point across from the Delaware state line, and suburbs running southeast to the flat vegetable fields of South Jersey. Its boroughs and townships retain their separate identities; right next to Camden is Collingswood, with its middle-class porches still freshly painted and its shops prosperous. The district includes some underclass poor, but most people here are at some level of upward mobility from the grinding working-class life of 50 years ago, living in comfortable communities, worried that the petrochemical plants which have helped many of them move up may also be poisoning their land, water and air. Politically, this is an area with a Democratic heritage, the most Democratic district in South Jersey.

The 1st District is represented by Rob Andrews, one of the most interesting young Democratic congressmen. Andrews grew up in Bellmawr, the son of a shipyard worker, made a splendid record in college and law school, returned home and with then-Congressman Jim Florio's support was elected to the Camden County Board of Chosen Freeholders (wonderful name!) before he was 30. When Florio left Congress to become governor in January 1990, he postponed the special election to replace him until November; he supported Andrews, though Andrews was silent on his tax increase. Andrews had other help. He spent $541,000 on his campaign, and he had a Republican opponent who switched positions on abortion and claimed to have attended a college he hadn't. Even so, in the anti-Florio climate, Andrews won by only 54%-43%.

Andrews entered the House as its youngest Democrat and has proved to be one of its most aggressive and independent-minded reformers. One big initiative was direct student loans. Andrews felt banks were making college loans inefficiently and that direct government loans would ''save money for students, families, schools and the federal treasury.'' Against strong lobbying opposition, he got the House to approve direct loan demonstration projects, got candidate Bill Clinton to endorse the idea in 1992 and then got it passed into law in 1993. He argues that it is one of the major achievements of the Clinton Administration. He has a rather conservative record on economics and foreign policy but is more liberal on cultural issues. He voted against tax increases, including the Clinton budget package of 1993 and announced early opposition to the Clinton health care program. To some of Andrews's Democratic critics, he is a grandstander who would cut needed government programs. But his record shows that he supports government that is vigorous and serves real needs--but insists on pruning government that isn't working and on not forcing voters to pay more in taxes for the same low level of services they've been getting.

Andrews's other priority that made him stand out in the early Clinton years was the A-to-Z spending cut; its originator, New Hampshire Republican Bill Zeliff, looked for a Democratic co-sponsor whose name started with A and came up with Andrews. The idea was to set aside 56 hours of congressional debate during which any member could propose reducing or zeroing out spending on any program, with a guaranteed roll call vote. Speaker Thomas Foley strongly opposed it, and Andrews and Zeliff, with 228 co-sponsors, sought to come up with 218 signatures on a discharge petition to get it out of committee. This helped trigger the reform making discharge signatures public, but Foley twisted enough arms to keep it from the floor. Interest waned when Republicans took control and Zeliff left to run for governor; instead Speaker Newt Gingrich put his somewhat similar Corrections Day procedure into effect.

In the Republican House Andrews has had less opportunity for such initiatives and perhaps less interest, for his focus has remained on New Jersey. After the November 1996 election he announced he was running for governor; he managed to get the endorsements of Jim Florio and Hudson County Executive Bob Janiszewski, who were both mentioned as candidates themselves. Andrews was initially favored to win the primary, but he ran into stiff competition from state Senator James McGreevey, who had the backing of more-Democratic county organizations plus key elements of organized labor. Former Morris County Prosecutor Michael Murphy was the dark horse of the race, running, he said, as the ''un-candidate.'' Andrews promised never to raise taxes, said he would force auto insurance costs down by requiring companies to lower rates if they wanted to continue issuing other policies, and called for combining the state's three toll road authorities. McGreevey said he would create a new insurance commissioner's office and proposed education referenda. Andrews swept south Jersey and took Hudson County, but McGreevey's big margins in Middlesex, Essex and Union Counties gave him a tight 39%-37% win, with Murphy taking 21%.

Andrews has been re-elected to the House by overwhelming margins and has continued to live in Haddon Heights, commuting by train to the Capitol. In the 105th Congress he helped win passage of a bill ensuring the rights of grandparents to visit grandchildren who moved to states with different custody laws. Despite his split with the Camden County Democratic organization which started in 1995 and widened to open rupture in 1998, his House seat seems safe as long as he wants it. His close loss in the gubernatorial primary does not rule out another race in 2001, when a wide-open contest seems likely. In the House, he joined the Armed Services Committee in 1999, a belated move that left him junior to 17 Democrats who were first elected to the House after Andrews.

Cook's Call:
Safe. Don't look for a competitive race in this solidly Democratic district.

The People:

• Pop. 1990: 594,494
• 3.9% rural; 12.2% age 65+;
• 78.4% White, 15.8% Black, 1.7% Asian, 0.2% Amer. Indian, 5.8% Hispanic origin; 3.9% Other.
• Households: 53.9% married couple families; 27.5% married couple fams. w. children; 37.9% college educ.; median household income: $35,250; per capita income: $14,502; median gross rent: $442; median house value: $94,100.

1996 Presidential Vote Clinton (D) 132,715 (59%) Dole (R) 61,294 (27%) Perot (I) 25,052 (11%)

1992 Presidential Vote Clinton (D) 118,060 (48%) Bush (R) 78,095 (32%) Perot (I) 48,252 (20%)