by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

May 15, 2008

Until a few months ago, Dick Zimmer had no intention of running for political office again. After six years in the House of Representatives, followed by two stinging defeats at the hands of Democrats, he was enjoying life as a lawyer and lobbyist at the Washington, DC, office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.

“I thought I was retired from politics,” he told NJ Jewish News in a telephone interview from the law firm’s New York office. “But when the opportunity came up after discussion with Republican leaders, my wife and I realized this is a very important time in our history and I could make a real contribution to the people of New Jersey if I were to be in the Senate.”

To get there, Zimmer will have to defeat two rivals in NJ’s June 3 Republican primary — State Sen. Joseph Pennacchio of Morris Plains and Ramapo College professor Murray Sabrin of Leonia.

After that he’ll have to face either incumbent Frank Lautenberg or Rep. Rob Andrews (D-Dist. 1) in November’s general election.

“There is a good chance I could get elected,” he said. “This is a blue state, but in John McCain we’ve got a popular presidential candidate at the top of the ticket who will do better than any Republican running in New Jersey has in the past 20 years.”

Zimmer’s own political fortunes have not fared as well. In 1996, living in Flemington in Hunterdon County, he gave up his House seat to run for the Senate, and faced a decisive defeat by Democrat Robert Torricelli. Four years later, he narrowly lost to Rep. Rush Holt (Dist. 12) in an attempted return to Congress.

Zimmer, who described himself as a “devout fiscal conservative,” said, “The issues I’d be running on are principally fiscal responsibility and getting rid of pork.

“In the long term, we must not only attack the earmarks and the pork, but focus on all aspects of government, including the defense budget, and making our entitlement programs more efficient,” he said.

Unlike his GOP opponents, Zimmer favors abortion rights. He touts “a strong record on the environment” and said, “I’ve been a political reformer since I was chairman of New Jersey Common Cause.”

Questioned about the mortgage crisis that has forced 1.5 million American homes into foreclosure in 2007, he said, “Congress has a role to play, but legislation has to be very carefully designed to help people who, through no fault of their own, are losing their homes. We should not reward the lenders or borrowers who were basically speculators.”

Zimmer favors gay civil unions, “but not marriage,” even as he opposes a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

He supports gun control legislation, but promptly adds a caveat. “I believe the Second Amendment has substance and should be respected the way the rest of the Bill of Rights is, but, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, it is not absolute. We can impose reasonable restrictions based on public safety.”

As he considers an unsafe world, Zimmer said he thinks the United States should “extricate ourselves from a combat role in Iraq as soon as possible, but in consultation with our military leaders, we should devise a strategy for withdrawal that will not leave the nation and the region in chaos and create a failed state. We cannot have a rigid timetable that would disregard military and political realities.”

He views Israel as facing “a very ominous situation. Now, more than ever, the United States has to stand by, not out of any altruism but out of hardheaded understanding that Israel is our most reliable ally in the region.”

As he looks at China’s place in the world in terms of its economic ascendancy and its support of brutal regimes in such trouble spots as Tibet and Sudan, Zimmer said the Bush administration “should not treat China as our enemy.” But he hastened to add that “we should have opposed allowing China to be the venue for the Olympics, not to mention the question of whether the president should show up for the Olympics.”

He welcomes the primary as a referendum on his ideology. “We’ll see if I’m out of synch with the Republicans in this state,” he said.

Although he has been attacked by opponents as a “carpetbagger” who has spent his post-congressional years in Washington, Zimmer’s NJ roots are deep.

He was born in Newark in 1944 and raised in Glen Ridge before graduating from Yale University and its law school. He served in both houses of the State Legislature between 1981 and 1990 before moving on to Congress.

Like Sabrin, the son of Holocaust survivors, Zimmer is Jewish.

“I think Judaism shapes my whole life,” he said. “The emphasis of Judaism’s prophets on social justice has a profound impact on me and the emphasis of Judaism on the here-and-now rather than the hereafter I think gives me a vital interest in the world.”

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Rating the Republicans

According to a Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey Poll published on April 30, 25 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents questioned would support Dick Zimmer as their U.S. Senate candidate. Five percent picked State Sen. Joseph Pennacchio, while four percent favor Ramapo College professor Murray Sabrin.

Among those polled, 20 percent expressed no preference among the candidates, and one month before the primary, some 40 percent of Republican voters said they were undecided.

“The Republican contenders don’t seem to be generating a lot of enthusiasm among GOP voters,” said poll director Patrick Murray.

Noting that two of the three candidates, Zimmer and Sabrin, happen to be Jewish, NJ Jewish News asked Murray whether that fact had any impact on the race.

“No,” he responded in an e-mail. “It’s a non-issue for the vast majority of voters.”

— ROBERT WIENER

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