National
Journal Group
Learn more about our publications and sign up for a free trial.
E-Mail Alerts
Get notified the moment your favorite features are updated.
Need A Reprint?
Click here for details on reprints, permissions and back issues.
Advertise With Us
Details on advertising with National Journal Group -- both online and in print -- can be found in our online media kit.
Go Wireless
Get daily political updates on your handheld computer.
|
Last Updated June 22, 2005
Frank Lautenberg is, once again, New Jersey's junior senator. He was elected in 1982, 1988 and 1994 and retired in 2000, then returned to run again in October 2002 after Bob Torricelli withdrew from the race. With his personal wealth and name recognition, Lautenberg was an obvious choice to succeed Torricelli; New Jersey Democrats persuaded the state supreme court to let them put Lautenberg's name on the ballot. Lautenberg grew up in Paterson, the son of an immigrant silk worker. He served in the Army Signal Corps in World War II and says he never would have gone to college without the G.I. Bill of Rights. He graduated from Columbia and in 1952 started a company called Automatic Data Processing, which by the mid-1990s had almost 30,000 employees and processed the payroll for nearly 10% of private sector jobs in the United States--a brilliant success story. When ADP went public in 1961, Lautenberg's stock was worth $50,000; now his net worth is in the vicinity of $40 million. Lautenberg was a contributor to Democratic campaigns and got on Richard Nixon's enemies list when he contributed $90,000 to George McGovern in 1972. But no one thought of him as a candidate until, not for the last time, scandal provided an opening: Democratic Senator Harrison Williams resigned in March 1982 as the Senate was considering his expulsion after his conviction in the Abscam case, and his appointed successor, Republican Nicholas Brady, made it clear he was not running for a full term (he became the first George Bush's Treasury Secretary). Lautenberg ran and spent $5 million of his own money and boasted of his high-tech experience. He beat several professional politicians in the primary and upset Republican Congresswoman Millicent Fenwick in the general 51%-48%. During the campaign he referred to the 72-year-old Fenwick, who was satirized in Doonesbury, as "eccentric" and a "national monument" and questioned her "fitness" and "ability to do the job." Lautenberg believes government helped him and others work their way up, and in his first three terms had a solidly liberal voting record. He bucked the party only occasionally. As chairman and ranking Democrat on the Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee, he got Congress to ban smoking first on two-hour flights, then on all domestic flights. He is a strong backer of gun control and author of the 1996 law barring those convicted of domestic abuse from possessing firearms. New Jersey is the second most expensive state to campaign in, because candidates must buy New York and Philadelphia TV, and Lautenberg's willingness to spend large amounts of his own money helped him win reelection over retired General Pete Dawkins in 1988 by 54%-46% and Assembly Speaker Chuck Haytaian in 1994 by 50%-47%. He can be an aggressive campaigner. In 1998 he seemed primed to run again, and no well-known Republican seemed eager to challenge him. But in February 1999 he announced that he would retire in 2000. One thing he surely did not miss was dealing with his colleague Bob Torricelli. Relationships between senators of the same state and party are often frayed and acrimonious; but the relationship between Lautenberg and Torricelli was probably more hostile than any since 1859, when California Senator David Broderick was killed in a duel with his colleague William Gwin's best friend. In March 1999, as Torricelli, the chairman of the Senate Democrats' campaign committee, was briefing colleagues, Lautenberg accused him of being too friendly with Republican Governor Christine Todd Whitman; Torricelli was enraged and in full view after the meeting approached Lautenberg and, as The New York Times daintily put it, "made a vulgar threat on his manhood." So Lautenberg was one New Jersey Democrat who was not unhappy when Torricelli fell into disfavor with voters in his 2002 reelection campaign. In most respects, Torricelli seemed a clear favorite to win. The three candidates in the June primary were mostly unknown--businessman Doug Forrester, South Jersey state Senators Susan Allen and John Matheussen. Money made the difference: Forrester, who started BeneCard, a manager of prescription drug benefits, was worth some $50 million and spent $3 million in the primary and beat Allen by a 45%-37% margin. But scandal loomed over Torricelli. For three years the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan had been investigating charges that businessman David Chang had given lavish gifts and cash to Torricelli and that Torricelli had worked to advance Chang's business interests in Korea. Torricelli did give such assistance, but denied receiving gifts; he said he reimbursed Chang. In January 2002 U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White announced that Torricelli would not be prosecuted. But White had sent information about the charges to the Senate Ethics Committee; on July 30 the committee "severely admonished" Torricelli for violating the Senate rule against receiving gifts over $50 but did not release the evidence to the public. Forrester made much of Torricelli's problems. In September, a federal judge in a lawsuit brought by news media ordered the unsealing of the memorandum on the case written by prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's office. They found "credible" Chang's allegations that Torricelli had accepted "tens of thousands" of dollars in gifts and cash. As details poured out, Torricelli plummeted in the polls. On Saturday, September 28, a Star-Ledger poll showed Forrester ahead 47%-34%--a devastating result. On Sunday Governor Jim McGreevey, Senator Jon Corzine and other New Jersey Democratic leaders met in Trenton and patched in Majority Leader Tom Daschle over the phone: Obviously they were trying to get Torricelli to withdraw from the race. On Monday Torricelli's office announced he would hold a press conference at 11 a.m.; he finally appeared around 5 p.m. and, in a lugubrious speech, withdrew. New Jersey Democrats were now in need of a well-known candidate to replace Torricelli. Congressman Bob Menendez, seeking a leadership position in the House, wasn't interested. Congressman Rob Andrews was presumably vetoed by McGreevey, who had narrowly beaten him in the 1997 gubernatorial primary. Congressman Frank Pallone, after giving it some thought, decided not to run. The risk of giving up a safe House seat to seek a nomination that might be rejected by a court may have seemed too great. Former Senator Bill Bradley let it be known he had no interest whatever. But Lautenberg, now evidently missing life in the Senate, said he would "seriously consider serving again if asked." It seems unlikely that Torricelli would have withdrawn if he had known that Lautenberg would get the nomination. But there was nothing he could do to stop him. Lautenberg was well known and capable of self-financing. McGreevey and the other Democrats quickly agreed on him. New Jersey law does not contain a provision for substituting a new candidate so late in the campaign unless a candidate has died; ballots had already been printed with Torricelli's name. But the New Jersey Supreme Court is made up of judicial activists of both parties with a propensity to accommodate the insiders of both major parties. In October 2002 it quickly approved state Democrats' request to substitute Lautenberg for Torricelli and ordered the state Democratic party to pay the $800,000 needed to print new ballots. The Lautenberg campaign moved into the Torricelli headquarters and Lautenberg was again a candidate for the Senate, without having to spend months fundraising. The easiest source of funds proved unavailable: Torricelli would not send over a dime from his $5 million campaign treasury. Lautenberg spent $1.5 million of his own money, and those funds, plus $1.2 million from national and New Jersey Democrats, turned out to be enough in this Democratic state. Now Forrester could no longer introduce himself as "the guy running against Bob Torricelli." He did run a cute ad on cable TV, showing a kid slamming his desk and saying, "I can't do this. I quit! If I fail this test, can I have Frank Lautenberg take it for me?" Forrester attacked Lautenberg as soft on defense and terrorism, citing his 1991 vote against the Gulf War resolution and he questioned whether Lautenberg at 78--six years older than Millicent Fenwick was when Lautenberg questioned her ability to do the job--was too old. Lautenberg attacked Forrester on Social Security, prescription drugs, abortion and gun control: Forrester was against state-paid abortions and had written a 1992 column in the West Windsor-Plainsboro Chronicle on owning semiautomatic guns. "Liberty is all about the government allowing citizens to do weird things unless there is a compelling documented public purpose which should preclude them." On October 30 they appeared together for 30 minutes on News 12 New Jersey, a cable channel available to 55% of state households; Lautenberg seemed a little ragged, but was plainly still up to the job. Forrester spent $10 million altogether, $7.5 million of it his own money; the Senate Republican campaign committee did not make New Jersey a top priority. Unsurprisingly, Lautenberg won 54%-44%, a better showing than in 1994; but then New Jersey has become more Democratic than it was in 1994. Lautenberg was disappointed when Senate Democrats did not give him credit for all his seniority; his previous service only entitled him to seniority over other freshmen. But he quickly directed his ire away from his fellow Democrats and toward the Bush administration. On the Commerce committee he maneuvered in June 2003 to overturn the FCC's changes in media concentration rules. He went on the warpath to stop privatization of the air traffic control system, holding up the FAA reauthorization in summer 2003 by demanding that the FAA refrain from even studying privatization. He got Trent Lott to agree to a one-year moratorium on privatizing any jobs, but that was unacceptable to the administration; passage of the bill waited until FAA Administrator Marion Blakey sent over a letter stating that no jobs "directly related to our air traffic control system" would be privatized during the fiscal year. Lautenberg voted against the Medicare/prescription drug bill, even though it was supported by many New Jersey pharmaceutical companies, and in 2004 tried to stop HHS from sending out letters explaining the new benefit. He spoke out stringently in November 2003 after George W. Bush signed the partial-birth abortion ban. On local issues, in 2003 Lautenberg tried to stop the state-authorized bear hunt on federal lands and in 2004 sponsored a bill with Jon Corzine and Congressman Rodney Frelinghuysen with $10 million to preserve land in the Jersey Highlands. During 2004 Lautenberg kept up a drumbeat of criticism of the Pentagon for awarding sole-source contracts to Halliburton. He sponsored an amendment, aimed at Halliburton, to prevent foreign subsidies of U.S. corporations to do business with nations on the terrorist watch list; it was defeated in the Senate 50-49 in May 2004 when Max Baucus changed his vote. In October he tried to attach the amendment to a must pass bill and threatened a filibuster. In April 2004 he took to the floor of the Senate with an object he called a chicken hawk and made a thinly veiled attack on Dick Cheney. He called for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation in May 2004 after revelations of the Abu Ghraib abuses and in December 2004 called on George W. Bush to fire him after his remarks on armored vehicles. He requested a hearing after Disney refused to distribute director Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11. In June 2004 he urged Attorney General John Ashcroft to authorize a special counsel investigation of the Halliburton contract. That month he sponsored an amendment to allow the media to photograph coffins of servicemen at Dover Air Force Base and another for a $2,000 bonus for troops subject to stop loss orders. In September 2004 he called for a fixed five-year term for the new national intelligence director. When Bush made a campaign stop in New Jersey in October 2004, Lautenberg said, "President Bush, time and time again, has made decisions that made New Jersey more vulnerable to terrorism. He's here because of November 2, not 9/11." When asked why Lautenberg was more outspoken than in his first three Senate terms, his colleague Jon Corzine said, "He's less risk-averse. I think Frank couldn't care less." Lautenberg said, "I do feel unconstrained." Lautenberg's seat comes up in 2008, when he turns 84, and in early 2005 few in New Jersey politics expected him to run again. But he regretted his decision to retire in 2000, and in December 2003 he said, "I like being back. If my health is good, I see no reason" not to run again.
Committees
National Journal Group offers both print and electronic reprint services, as well as permissions for academic use, photocopying and republication. Click here to order, or call us at 877-394-7350. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NEW FEATURE
[ Site Index | Staff | Privacy Policy | E-Mail Alerts ]
[ Reprints And Back Issues | Content Licensing ]
[ Make NationalJournal.com Your Homepage ]
[ About National Journal Group Inc. ]
[ Employment Opportunities ]
Copyright 2012 by National Journal Group Inc.
The Watergate · 600 New Hampshire Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20037
202-739-8400 · fax 202-833-8069
NationalJournal.com is an Atlantic Media publication.
