[[/tt]By Susan Crabtree | Posted: 1/9/08 4:53 PM [ET]
January 09, 2008
Retiring Rep. Jim Saxton (R-N.J.) plans to endorse Chris Myers in the GOP contest to replace him, a move that could boost Myers’s campaign in a competitive Republican primary.
Saxton will appear with Myers and announce his support at Medford Township Community Center at 11 a.m. Thursday.
It was widely known that Myers, a vice president at Lockheed Martin and the deputy mayor of Medford, is Saxton’s favored successor. But since Saxton’s early-November decision to leave Congress at the end of the year, the 12-term veteran has declined to formally back a candidate in the contested GOP primary.
“I’m going to have some nice things to say about candidate Chris Myers tomorrow,” Saxton said in an interview. “It will be a pleasure to be there. He is undoubtedly the best candidate in either party to carry on the activities and priorities of New Jersey’s 3rd district.”
The South New Jersey seat may be difficult to hold and the endorsement of a longtime popular GOP veteran undoubtedly will buoy Myers’s campaign in a tough election year for Republicans.
The Republican primary winner will face Democrat John Adler, who lost in a challenge to Saxton in 1990 but went on to become a state senator. Adler planned to wage an aggressive race against Saxton before the retirement announcement, and his campaign has already collected $610,000 with $580,000 cash on hand.
Saxton’s endorsement may be designed to boost Myers’s campaign and convince John Kelly, the other GOP candidate in the race and a local official from Ocean County, to drop out. That would avoid a messy primary that would weaken both Republican candidates and eat up precious financial resources before the general election.
Kelly hired Lawrence Bathgate II, a former finance chairman at the Republican National Committee, and outgoing state Sen. Leonard Connors as campaign managers. His campaign says it has raised $50,000 and has commitments from supporters for another $150,000, while Saxton says Myers has raised $150,000 in just two months.
Saxton, the second most senior Republican on the Armed Services panel, said Myers’s life history makes him the best candidate for a district with two military bases: Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base. Myers, he said, won an ROTC scholarship to the University of Colorado, graduated with a degree in political science, joined the U.S. Navy and earned numerous medals for his part in Desert Shield and Desert Storm in Iraq.
After his military service, Myers received a master’s degree in public administration from Cornell University and went on to work for Lockheed Martin, where he now supervises 6,000 employees. In 2003, he won a seat on the Medford town council and more recently became the deputy mayor.
“In his family life, his educational life, and in his professional and public-service life, he’s exhibited strong leadership,” Saxton said. “He’s just a great success story.”
And Myers did it all by the age of 42, a fact that resonates strongly with Saxton.
“He actually reminds me of me because I was 42 when I was first elected — but he is a lot more successful than I was back then,” Saxton remarked.
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/saxton-to-back-myers-in-n.j.s-3rd-2008-01-09.html
