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 sooner 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 the 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 a 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.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
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