Hey Kossacks,
Starting today, I'm going to be concentrating on New Jersey's legislative races, which are up this November. New Jersey, while nominally a Democratic state has many pockets of Republican strength remaining, and I'll be working this fall to add some blue to those "reddish" areas of the state. More about that soon.
Tonight, however I want to tell an inspirational tale from the "heartland" of Republican New Jersey: Morris County. The Democratic candidate in question is running for the State Senate in District 25, against Republican incumbent Anthony Bucco. He has no website, no blog, and no money. He is in many ways your typical "sacrificial lamb" candidate. Yet Frank Herbert is in some respects very, very different from the sacrificial lamb type. Let me tell you about him and his remarkable story.
The first thing you need to know about Frank Herbert is that he was born during the Great Depression...during the Hoover Administration. Most people his age are in retirement, including most of his friends and colleagues. Indeed, up until this year Frank Herbert was in retirement himself, part of a "Romeo" club (Retired Old Men Eating Out) consisting of veteran Democrats now out of public life. Now Frank Herbert is running for the State Senate, shortly after recovering from pancreas surgery and a broken right thumb. You see, politics, public service and the Democratic Party are in Herbert's blood.
The reason I mentioned that he grew up in the Great Depression is because Frank Herbert's political idol and role model is Franklin D. Roosevelt. When I spoke with Herbert last week about his campaign, he brought up Roosevelt himself. "There was a leader," he said, emphasizing the first word. "When FDR led this country, we weren't afraid of our government. We loved him, trusted him, knew he was fighting for us, because he was giving us hope that we would survive as a nation." He then went on to describe what he saw as a Democratic philosophy: "It's FDR's vision," he said. "The Four Freedoms, a New Deal that put people over profits, and a government you could count on to help you and your family. It's Social Security, Medicare later on, public education, the GI Bill and national health insurance. If we fight for those values today, we'll win again."
Frank Herbert has never been ashamed to call himself a New Deal liberal. Surprisingly, this former English teacher in High School fared well in the then solidly Republican Bergen County. He served as a town councilman, a Bergen County Freeholder and a State Senator in the span of 8 years (1973-1981). His proudest accomplishment was to sponsor the creation and expansion of NJ Transit, which thousands of New Jerseyans use today to travel across the state and to New York City. Although he lost reelection to Republican Gerald Cardinale (who still serves in the seat today, although he faces a tough challenger in Joseph Ariyan...more on NJ-39 soon), Herbert later received a gold medal for his leadership in transportation from Governor Tom Kean, Sr - a Republican. Indeed, some legislators and public policy experts still refer to Herbert today as the "Father of NJ Transit".
But that's not the end of Frank Herbert's remarkable public service - far from it. You see, this current campaign is not the first time he's "taken one for the team." In 1994, he has just retired from teaching and moved to Morris County with his wife. His new Congressman was Dean Gallo, a popular, rather old-school Republican, who represented a solidly Democratic district. He was so popular that he rarely faced major opposition. 1994 was no expected to be no different.
Then, disaster struck. The Democrats ended up with two candidates - their organization "sacrificial lamb"... and a Holocaust denier and a supporter of David Duke named John Kucek. The problem was that Kucek successfully challenged the petitions of the other candidate, thus knocking him off the ballot. And Kucek was prepared to use his expected nomination as a megaphone for his despicable politics. It would have been a disgrace for the Democratic Party - the party of FDR, Truman and Kennedy - to be represented in Morris County politics by Kucek.
Enter Frank Herbert. The recently retired teacher agreed to become a write-in candidate for the nomination...even though no write-in candidate had ever won a contested race in recent memory. Undeterred by the odds, Herbert put on his old "running shoes", campaigned like hell and talked to as many of the 60,000 registered Democrats in the district as he could. As James Ahearn of the Bergen Record wrote in 2003:
"There was no money for modern campaign tools. Workers handed out flyers at festivals. Herbert shooks hands wherever he could find them...and called his organization the "Committee Against Bigotry"...finally, wonder of wonders, he won.
Herbert stunned the NJ political experts (and John Kucek) with a landslide primary victory as a write-in. As Ahearn later wrote, "[Herbert] can take pride in an astonishing, for-the-record-books successful write-in campaign for a Congressional nomination, a victory for party integrity and for New Jersey decency."
Now, the article itself is out of print. I have a copy of it only because Frank Herbert mailed me a copy of it...together with a thank-you note for taking the time to talk with him. As things turned out, 1994 was a very bad year to run as a Democrat, particularly in deep-red Morris County. Although Gallo was forced to retire after fatally contracting cancer, the GOP selected another well-known candidate in Rodney Freylingheusen (his family had three ancestors who had served in the seat, including his father), who rode the GOP tide to an easy victory. Btw, Freylingheusen faces a rematch with 2006 nominee Tom Wyka , who did better than any Democrat in recent memory last time around. I expect to help Tom out next time around.
Meanwhile, back to Frank Herbert. 13 years after his last attempt for public office, he agreed to run for State Senate against Anthony Bucco, a conservative Republican who has been in the seat since 1997. While Bucco won with only 55% in 2003, it was against a well-funded Democrat whose husband had held the seat before Bucco (as a Democrat). To be frank (pardon the pun), Frank Herbert will not be well-funded. To put it politely, his chances of winning depend on Bucco being found with a live boy or a dead girl in his bed before the election.
But that doesn't diminish the respect I have for Frank Herbert one iota. In fact, he is campaigning after going through pancreatic surgery as well as breaking his right thumb! He also is at work attacking Bucco for his opposition to Stem Cell research and for signing an no-new-taxes pledge (which is irresponsible to do in a state that needs money desperately). He also has plans of his own should he get elected in November:
"In the off chance that he does get back to Trenton, Herbert has a rather unique idea for his first priority: donate a portion of toll road income to stopping fare increases on New Jersey Transit, an agency that he helped create during his time in the Senate (Herbert said he used to be occasionally referred to as "The Father of New Jersey Transit.") Of course, that probably won’t be possible if Gov. Corzine’s monetization plan comes to fruition, something Herbert said he opposes."
From Politics NJ.com's article
Most importantly for a candidate in such a tough district, Frank Herbert has retained his sense of humor. The article quotes him as saying, "Up until my recent operation, I was thinking of challenging [Bucco] to a 200 yard dash. I think I’d beat him." (same link as above) Maybe he'll beat him in November 2007...who knows?
Yet even in the likely event that Frank Herbert is defeated this November, he can still take pride in his effort. Once again, a grand old Democrat has "taken one for the team" and offered himself as a candidate for public office when most people his age are retired. He is a candidate for Democrats in New Jersey and nationally to be proud of...and I am proud to call him a friend.
So, if in the future Frank Herbert gets a website, expect me to ask you guys to send him a few cents. He'd deserve it.