Column by JOHN SCHOONEJONGEN
You can say what you want about U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, but the man knows how to deliver a punch. And, even at age 88, he’s lost none of his zest for political street brawls.
Lautenberg, a Democrat who first won election to the Senate in 1982, will be 90 if he chooses to run in 2014, and he’s giving the impression that he’s not in any mood to ride off into the sunset.
Last week, Lautenberg got into it with his Republican nemesis, Gov. Chris Christie, over the governor’s proposal to merge Rutgers-Camden with nearby Rowan University, creating a kind of South Jersey super university, complete with medical school. Lautenberg called for a federal look-see into the proposal to see if it would truly benefit the interested parties.
In the same letter, the senator then seemed to take a swipe at South Jersey Democratic political boss George Norcross III, who is an enthusiastic supporter of the plan.
“Suspicions have been raised that this decision has been crafted to benefit powerful political interests without regard for the impact on students, the academic institutions themselves and the community,” Lautenberg wrote.
It wasn’t long before Senate President Stephen Sweeney, a Democrat rumored to be interested in Lautenberg’s seat in 2014, fired back, calling Lautenberg’s comments “bizarre and misguided” in a letter signed by a number of his colleagues in the Legislature, mostly Democrats.
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