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- This is One-On-One.

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(upbeat music) - Hi everyone.

Steve Adubato with my co-anchor and colleague Jacqui Tricarico, this is, Remember Them.

Jacqui, we talked to David Wildstein, we're remembering a whole range of New Jersey political figures.

Some are well known, some are not.

Who passed away in 2024, why are we doing that, why does it matter?

- This isn't the first time David's joining us because he really has a wealth of knowledge about New Jersey politics.

And the politicians who have served here in the state and New Jersey globe each year puts out a year of review article.

And in that article they highlight some of those political figures who have sadly passed away.

So we took a look at that list and had David help us learn more about those politicians, about those figures here in New Jersey and why they mattered.

And Steve, I know one person that we didn't get to touch upon with David, which was on our list, but figured we could do it here 'cause I know you know about her, is Ingrid Reed.

She was not just an educator, but she was a feminist pioneer, a civil rights advocate, and actually had a hand in helping with the transition and the merger of NJTV to NJPBS under the flagship of WNET here.

So for you, Steve, what do you think we should know about Ingrid Reed?

- So, Ingrid Reed is one of those people.

She never served in public office, did not have a high profile, but she was a scholar, an educator.

I knew her from way back in my graduate days at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.

And Ingrid was a giant in so many ways.

She wasn't just a scholar and an academic.

She taught so many of us about the importance of understanding feminist history in politics.

Jacqui's, you've done some great work on the Suffragette movement and the women's right to vote.

Well, Ingrid understood that on so many levels and appreciated the work of so many who fought for women to be more engaged in the political process, for women to have more power and influence in the political process.

So we look at Ingrid Reed, we look at all these other folks who passed away.

We remember, that's the whole point of Remember Them, remembering people who mattered, whether you know their name or not.

And Jacqui, that's why we talk to David Weinstein, by the way, Weinstein's obsessed with political history.

So we talk about Chuck Haytaian, the former Speaker of the House, Peter Shapiro, the Essex County executive who ran for governor, who was a very close friend of mine politically.

Lee Laskin, a former New Jersey State Senator and Joe Lieberman, yeah, New Jersey Connection.

Senator Lieberman from Connecticut.

For Jacqui, myself and the entire team at Remember Them, One-on-One, check it out.

- All right, folks.

We have the quintessential New Jersey political historian, not officially on his title because he is the editor of NJ Globe, one of our media partners, David Wildstein.

Hey, David, how you doing?

- I'm great, Steve, how are you?

- Good, we're gonna remember some folks who passed away in the political universe in New Jersey in 2024, and then expanded to some other folks who are in the political world who have passed in the past, but are worth remembering.

Can we start with this, 2024, we lost so many important people.

- Yeah.

- New Jersey assembly speaker, Chuck Haytaian.

Who was he, why does he matter?

Go ahead.

- He was an authentic guy, completely comfortable in his own skin.

A dry cleaner from Hackettstown who made it to the highest levels of state government.

He was, you know, for a while, the most powerful Republican in New Jersey, nearly won election to the US Senate.

And he was just a gregarious, old school special guy.

- And, you know, I was fortunate enough to have served with Chuck Haytaian in the state legislature back in the day, He was fun, funny.

- Yeah.

- But you didn't want to piss him off.

Is that a fair assessment, David Wildstein?

- It absolutely is.

He had, you know the cliche, a memory like an elephant and those things that he didn't wanna remember.

I mean, I remember he used to walk around so angry over his loss in a US Senate race.

He had the results.

- What year was that, was that against Lautenburg?

- It was Lautenburg 94.

That's when that Clinton midterm Republican tied, he didn't get the support from Washington that he felt he should have, where he thought he could have won that, this guy had the results laminated and he kept it in his jacket pocket, probably for the rest of his life.

- Yeah, Armenian background mattered to Chuck.

- Very much, yeah, yeah.

- And that was rare in New Jersey to have someone whose family was from Armenia to reach the highest heights in New Jersey politics.

- It was, it was.

And you know, he struggled with that.

His name was Garabed Haytaian.

Chuck was his nickname.

- We called him Chuck.

- We did, everybody called him Chuck, because he just, you know, and I remember having these conversations with him.

He just didn't feel that voters, especially out in Western New Jersey, were gonna vote for a man named Garabed.

He thought it was just not a name that would be appealing on the ballot.

And sort of went with Chuck.

- Chuck was an interesting guy and a fun guy to be around, but again, did not want to get him mad.

Hey, let's shift gears.

And Chuck Haytaian was a Republican, one of the most prominent Democrats back in the day, Peter Shapiro.

- Yeah.

- And I think you know, David, that Peter and I had a very close relationship and brought me into political life back in the mid 80s.

He was elected to, clarify this, I told you off camera that my kids were arguing about this because it said that I was the youngest state legislature, excuse me, legislature in New Jersey, at the time I was when I served.

But Peter Shapiro was the youngest state legislator to be elected in the history of the state at 23.

Talk about Peter Shapiro.

- Right, I mean, he was smart as a whip.

And combining, you know, with his brains, I always viewed him as sort of fearless.

He was not afraid of old back room party bosses.

He didn't mind mixing it up.

And I mean, the guy, I hope I'm saying it's something I can't say on a family show, but he had balls.

He really did, and he was willing to throw punches and he was unwilling to take a "No kid, it's not your time yet, wait your turn".

Very ambitious.

You know, he wanted to be the first Jewish president.

And I remember, you know, here we were, all of us in the early eighties, and, you know, you were an assemblyman.

Peter was the county executive.

I was in office in Livingston.

There was genuine conversation about, is it gonna be Shapiro is the first Jewish president out of Essex, or was it gonna be Adubato, the first Italian president outta Essex County?

And by the way- - We saw how that worked out.

- At least they talked about you, Steve.

Nobody ever said, wow, Wildstein could be president.

At least they talked about you in that matter.

But Shapiro was just, yeah.

- I'm sorry, Peter ran by way of background, sorry David, and when I say Peter, Peter was the county executive when I was in the state legislature.

He was the chair of my campaign back in the mid 80s.

But what's ironic about that was he was so anxious after he was in the state assembly first, and then county executive, wanted to run for governor and ran in 1985 and changed the course of political history in the state.

Because how badly did he get beat by incumbent Republican Tom Kean.

And what impact did that have on certain unnamed Democrats in the state legislature?

- Yeah, I mean, Shapiro got 30% of the vote as a Democrat in New Jersey.

Kean beat him by 40 points.

Lots of Democratic leaders were for Kean, wiped out Democrats in the legislature in down ballot, Republicans picked up 14 seats.

Lot of really, really talented people lost their seats there.

And that was a tough calculation for Shapiro.

He and I, a couple years before he passed away, I asked him, I said, why didn't you run for Harrison Williams' US Senate seat?

It was 1982, you had just finished your first four years as exec, people had mentioned him.

And he said something that I'll never forget 'cause he was sort of unlike Peter, he said, "I wanted to run for reelection as county executive."

He said, "I wanted the validation of the voters that these changes that I brought actually mattered to them."

And I'll tell you, if Shapiro had run, there would've been no Frank Lautenberg and Shapiro would've run, probably got to the US Senate.

- And PS and I mentioned this before, it was that election where Shapiro was trounced by Tom Kean.

That some of us who were quote down ballot in the state legislature lost our seats.

And some of us wound up having very different careers, but there was some much more prominent, effective and experienced legislators.

I was there for literally one term.

Other people were great legislators who lost their seats on the Democratic side.

Hey, how about this one?

This is a guy I didn't know, Lee Laskin, served in the state senate.

What a character, tell everyone who Lee Laskin was and why Laskin should be remembered, not for all good things by the way.

- No, I mean, he was a tough guy.

He was not especially likable.

He had a connection with voters, but he wasn't sort of, you know, he wasn't beloved by his colleagues.

But here's a guy who forged a political career just because he was really frequently the smartest guy in the room and brains- - But hold on, David, he would tell you, but sorry for interrupting.

Laskin from what I knew of him, he would let you know that he believed he was the smartest person in the room.

- Yeah.

- Which did not go over so well with a lot of smart folks.

- No, no, it didn't, it didn't.

And the legislature, and we can talk about this another time, but the legislature intellectually was at a higher level than it is today, unfortunately.

Had a lot of really, really smart people, the really smart ones to me were the ones who knew they were smart, comfortable with themselves and didn't have to advertise it.

Lee Laskin could be a little bit of a jerk.

And you know, the way he lost his career is he had exercised senatorial courtesy against George Norcross's father to stop him from getting a seat on the state racing commission.

- Because Laskin was a state senator represented in Camden County.

- Right, yes.

- And senatorial courtesy is not in the constitution, but is a tradition in the state where if someone is nominated for a judicial post or some other prominent post, if that person comes from your home county and that home county senator chooses to block you.

- Right.

- That is called senatorial courtesy.

And you can block that nomination.

Pick it up from there, David.

- Right, and so the committee never takes them up.

And so Laskin blocked George Norcross's father, who was a labor leader.

His son never forgot it.

And 1991 comes along, Laskin is running for reelection in what was a hugely Republican year, the anti Florio and anti-tax wave election.

And Norcross newly elected in his first two years as the Camden County Democratic Chairman puts together like a $5 million budget and takes Laskin out in order to revenge, for revenge.

He avenged his own father by removing a guy from office that stopped his father from getting on the scheme of things just sort of a mid-level state government position.

- By the way, do a search on George Norcross, a political boss behind the scenes in the state.

There was some legal issues as we speak, but his influence was at its Zenith at the time that David Wildstein is talking about.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- There are people who passed in 2024 in the political universe connected to New Jersey, then we're gonna talk about some other folks who passed before that.

Can you give me a minute or two on Joseph Lieberman, former United States Senator with strong Jersey roots.

Go ahead, David Wildstein.

- He was a guy who played well in Jersey when he ran for vice president and in 2000.

- Tell everyone when he ran, he ran with Al Gore.

- With Al Gore.

So some people think that he won, you know, back when election denying wasn't as bad a thing as it is today.

There are people who think he really was elected vice president, but Joe Lieberman was a man of principal, and it was his principals that got him the spot on the Gore ticket.

Lieberman had attended Yale Law School with Bill Clinton, and then during the Monica Lewinsky event, Lieberman was critical of Clinton, Gore's polling showed him that he couldn't beat Clinton term three, he needed to make himself his own man.

And so he put this guy on the ticket who had been critical of a president of his own party in order to show his independence.

- He was a real independent.

- He was, he was.

- Did he become an independent, did he become an independent?

- Eventually, you know, about six years later, he lost the Democratic primary in Connecticut, ran as an independent and won reelection to the Senate.

- David, can we do this?

I'm cutting David off because there's so many other people wanna talk about.

- Yeah.

- Hey, I know people are like, why is Adubato talking about when he was in the legislature, but when I was there for, what'd they say in major league baseball?

Cup of coffee.

- Cup of coffee, yeah.

- Tell everybody what that means.

- Cup of coffee is the minimum amount of time that you could be there, which in the state assembly is two years.

- Hey, thank you for reminding me.

- Yeah, - How about this?

When I served the Speaker of the house, Alan Karcher, who wrote a wonderful book called Municipal Madness.

- Right.

- It was a book that focused on home rule in New Jersey and how there were way too many too, communities, towns, municipalities, madness, and why our taxes in part are so high.

Who was Alan Karcher and why will he matter forever in New Jersey political history, David Wildstein?

- Well, he was the Speaker of the Assembly, a democratic speaker with Republican governor Tom Kean, and Karcher was smart as a whip, policy wonk and unwavering in his political convictions.

And not afraid to get into people's faces and combative, I mean, really, really combative.

- Hold on a second.

He was a combative liberal.

- Yes.

- Who, and by the way, never hid from that moniker, you're a liberal, but he fought hard, go ahead, David.

- No, I mean, what would've have been like if George McGovern were in the, you know, in the New Jersey State Assembly.

But he fought not just with Republicans, he fought with Democrats and people that were in his caucus who he felt were being sort of moving a little bit off of the Democratic party principles and into the middle, he would get right in their face.

And you know, this guy was tough as nails based upon his own personal convictions.

- Real quick on this, 1985 New Jersey Transportation Trust Fund, which was a long-term funding plan put forward by Republican governor Tom Kean that would provide dollars for different communities, for road repair, et cetera.

And I'll never forget that Governor Kean and his cabinet came to me and said, Adubato, I know you're a Democrat, but if you vote for this, we can bring these dollars to your district to help these roads and fix these potholes.

And so I secretly decided to vote for the transportation trust fund when the Democrats had a majority of only three or four at the time.

And David, real quick, what do you think Alan Karcher did to you when he found out that I was voting for the Transportation Trust fund and the Republicans led by Governor Kean, what do you think he did?

- I think he brought you into the principal's office and threatened you and tried to move you and probably even got your Uncle Mike involved in trying to move you on that.

- Don't go there.

My Uncle Mike was in the legislature, Senior member.

He also told me I was gonna be taken off of certain committees.

And I would never win reelection if I went against the Democrats.

And I said, but it's good for the district.

He said, but it's not good for the party.

But the transportation trust fund happened.

It became a good thing, bipartisan thing, by the way, after it passed, all the Democrats happened to be for it.

I wonder how that happened.

Hey, can we do this?

This was a guy who defies normal analysis politically.

Tony Imperiale, State Senator Tony Imperiale.

He was Trump before Trump, and it was in my neighborhood.

My dad and Tony Imperiale fought constantly because they came from the same neighborhood, saw things very different politically.

But I grew up knowing who he was.

He was an independent, but who was he really and why did he make a mark on New Jersey politics?

Tony Imperiale.

- So, he was a vigilante in the North Ward.

- Did he carry a gun at all times?

- He carried a gun, a pearl handled revolver, you know, in the early 70s on the floor of the state Senate.

I was like 12 years old.

And he takes the gun out of the holster and he shows it to me.

Lets me hold it, it's the first gun I ever held.

- they didn't have guns in Livingston.

- They were all locked up in some antiques case or something.

- Yeah, so he shows you the gun, go ahead.

- But he was, and you know, we shouldn't sugarcoat this.

He was a racist, he was a bigot.

- Absolutely.

- He was a segregationist.

He was a nice man.

He had a big, giant heart.

And by the way, you know, I don't mean to, you know, you have to set the stage, Tony Imperiale, a good day was 350, 400 pounds.

He was intimidating.

But he would never have... he was at a certain period in time after the Newark riots where he built a genuine political base out of whites still living in certain parts of the city of Newark.

- My neighborhood.

- And they weren't happy.

They weren't happy about public housing projects.

They felt unsafe.

- Did not wanna live with African Americans in the same neighborhood.

And Tony Imperiale in 1968, the year after the rebellion, riots in Newark, in fact supported George Wallace, a segregationist governor.

- Yeah.

- From Alabama, who did not want to allow African American students at the University of Alabama.

That was Tony Imperiale's guy.

But he was a complex guy.

And ironically in the end when he passed, my dad, who was alive at the time, wound up, let's just say this, we pay tribute to Imperiale and the good things he did in the neighborhood.

But you cannot deny the things he did and said publicly that were, let's just say inflammatory at best.

David, can you do this?

There's so many men here and there are not enough women because tell everyone what you said before we got on camera.

Why don't we remember more women in politics in New Jersey have passed?

- Because women that are in an age where they're dying are in an age where they didn't have an opportunity to run for office.

So, what we are seeing now is people die in their 80s, they die in their 90s.

And they were of a generation where they didn't have the chance to run.

- Gimme just a few seconds on Barbara Curran, politician, attorney, judge, go.

- Yeah, I mean, first of all, a very special lady, elected to the assembly in her 20s.

She had been a newspaper reporter.

She ran the Nixon campaign in New Jersey in 1972, goes to the state assembly, Watergate year among the few freshmen Republicans.

- Republicans got thrown out.

- Destroyed, annihilated.

I mean, just, you know, it was crazy how many people lost their career.

But here's Barbara Curran, you know, again, kind and smart and went to law school while serving in the state assembly, got her law degree when Tom Kean, who she served with, got elected governor, she became the president of the BPU, the Board of Public Utilities, then became a superior court judge, among the few people, and I believe she is the first person, but among the few people to serve in the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the government.

- That is David Wildstein, editor in chief at New Jersey Globe, one of our media partners and a historian, you can tell you don't need me to tell you, of everything New Jersey politics.

He lives, breathes, thinks about this stuff all the time.

Check out his website.

Hey David, thank you, appreciate it.

- Thanks for having me on, Steve, always a pleasure.

- You got it for the team at Remember Them and One-on-One, particularly my co-anchor and executive producer of Remember Them Jaqui Tricarico, we thank you so much for watching as we attempt to remember just some of the prominent political figures in our state who have passed.

But their impact is lasting.

I'm Steve Adubato, see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by PSEG Foundation.

New Jersey’s Clean Energy program.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

Newark Board of Education.

Johnson & Johnson.

United Airlines.

Atlantic Health System.

Kean University.

And by Community FoodBank of New Jersey.

Promotional support provided by NJ.Com.

And by BestofNJ.com.

- [Narrator] To see more One on One with Steve Adubato programs, visit us online at SteveAdubato.org.

If you would like to express an opinion, email us at info@caucusnj.org.

Find us on Facebook at facebook.com/steveadubatophd and follow us on X @steveadubato.

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