Biggest House retirement shocker of the cycle?
Rep. Mike Ferguson will announce today that he will not seek re-election to a fifth term in 2008. The 37-year-old Republican, who won re-election last year by just 1% against Democratic Assemblywoman Linda Stender, wants to spend more time with his four young children.Senate Minority Leader-designate Thomas Kean, Jr. becomes one of the most likely GOP candidates for the seat. Kean, the Republican U.S. Senate in 2006, was among the candidates who ran against Ferguson in the 7th district Republican primary in 2000, when Bob Franks gave up the seat to run for the Senate.
This seat just vaulted up a dozen or so places on the list of pick-up opportunities for Democrats.
(For those keeping score, this makes 17 GOP House retirements this year. Wowza!)
Update (Trent): While this is a seat Kerry and Gore narrowly lost (with 47% and 48%, respectively), a PVI of R+0.6 suggests Stender should be able to easily improve on last year’s performance without an incumbent in the race.
What are our odds? Anyone?
What was the vote that Kean got in ’06 in this CD? I guess an open seat is almost always better than an incumbent (WY-AL excepted) but Kean will be formidable. Money won’t be an issue for him, and he has very high name id from the ’06 race.
His dad, Gov Kean, is the most popular Republican in the past 25 years in NJ. I would be interested in Kean Jr’s returns in the Cong Dist last time. We can hope he has been forced to take controversial Republican positions and had to be negative in that race and can be pegged as a “loyal bushie” rather than as the non-partisan common sense guy that his dad is known as.
Any chance that someone other than Stender might enter now? Is she our best hope?
Tom Kean was elected minority leader of the senate, I don’t think he would give that up to run for the house. Plus I think he is more interrested in running for Governor in 2009 against Corzine.
this is one of those seats where it was probably easier to beat the incumbent than to win an open seat, but not by much.
Democrats will have a tough time beating Tom Kean Jr, as they need to win his state senate district to win districtwide.
Also if Giuliani is the nominee, all bets are off. He’ll win this district soundly.
Stender is the only Democrat who can do it, and against anyone but Kean with a GOP Presidential nominee who is not Giuliani, she has this pretty close to in the bag.