Governor Christie named New Jersey’s attorney general – one of his closest friends and advisers – to temporarily fill Frank Lautenberg’s vacant Senate seat.
But Christie said the attorney general, Jeffrey Chiesa, will not run in October’s special election for the seat. So the contest for the Republican spot on the ballot is still wide open. Steve Lonegan, a former mayor of Bogota, is so far the only announced candidate on the Republican side.
The casket of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg Thursday lay in the well of the Senate yesterday on a bier that once held remains of President Abraham Lincoln. Current and former senators, House members, White House aides and thousands of congressional staffers lined up to pay their respects to the five-term Democrat.
In the state Assembly yesterday, Senate President Stephen Sweeney’s centerpiece gun bill stalled after it failed to win enough votes to get out of committee. Assemblyman Joseph Cryan, D-Union, abstained, complaining that the costs of the bill were unknown.
And four former New Jersey governors have added their names to the growing number of conservationists trying to stop a planned corporate headquarters that would rise above the Palisades.
