Political greenhorn brings Republicans in New Jersey hope

Forget about slaying dragons.

New Jersey's Republicans are having a difficult enough time trying to knock off someone they say is a dinosaur -- 84-year-old Frank Lautenberg, the state's senior US senator, who has given every indication he plans to run for re-election, despite the public's wariness.

No had the most mainstream candidate dropped out of the Republican race this month than two counterpunchers from the party's conservative flank began lacerating each other.

Now Andrew Unanue, a political novice who is a former chief operating officer at his family's business, Goya Foods, is hoping to make a late splash. And although Unanue, who owned a Manhattan nightclub, has been photographed far more often with socialites than with senators, he does have one attribute that the Republican establishment says is crucial to wage a battle against Lautenberg: a lot of money to finance a campaign.

"He's the only one who can raise the money necessary to defeat Senator Lautenberg," said Mark Campbell, a Republican political consultant who sounded ebullient at the idea of Unanue.

Whether fortunes of a cash-strapped party that has lost every statewide election since 1997 can be revived by Unanue, a resident of Alpine, a wealthy pocket in Bergen County, who has never held public office is a large imponderable. But with an April 7 primary deadline approaching, some Republicans have been itching, almost obsessively, to attract a moderate candidate to fill the place of Anne Estabrook, a wealthy real estate developer who dropped out this month after suffering a minor stroke.

Hardly day has passed since Estabrook's withdrawal without rumor of a possible candidate, preferably one with deep pockets, taking on the two remaining candidates from the conservative wing of the party, state Senator Joseph Pennacchio, a dentist and veteran legislator from Morris County, and Murray Sabrin, a finance professor at Ramapo College who ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2000.

After initially throwing up their hands in the face of an anticipated Democratic rout at the polls in November, there has been a clear sign that Lautenberg is vulnerable. His recent poll numbers have been underwhelming, with one finding that while a plurality of residents approved of the senator, 58 percent preferred that someone else be elected.