The Looming Albin Nomination Battle

Just as we said before, the Albin nomination fight is going to be an opportunity for Senator Paul Sarlo to prove that Dick Codey and the Democratic leadership made the right choice to elevate him to the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee when Harvard College-Harvard Law educated John Adler was elected to Congress.

Sarlo’s initial salvo into the fight already shows an intemperance that may foreshadow an inability for the chairman to make the delicate, yet important, decisions about the debate over Albin’s qualifications and past judicial service.

Sarlo is committed to keeping politics out of this renomination, which is precisely what the Corzine administration needs. It is a testament to the poor political position that Corzine finds himself in that he should need to announce the renomination in May, when the term of Albin’s initial appointment doesn’t expire until October. But since there is considerable scuttlebutt that Corzine himself may not remain a viable candidate for office by October, it would be terrible timing to drop out of the race for re-election, and have a judge who’s lifetime tenure nomination is pending, to vote to allow Cory Booker to fill Corzine’s vacancy on the ballot.

But back to Sarlo. With no disrespect to the education he received, and the hard work he must do everyday, holding down three jobs as Wood-Ridge mayor, State Senator and chief engineer at the premier pay to play construction firm in North Jersey, Sarlo will be simply unable to control what will certainly become a political circus.

Senator Baroni has been waiting since 2002, when Albin sat on the Court that allowed the Torricelli for Lautenberg switch to interrogate a Justice on this question. This renomination hearing offers Baroni the chance to lay bare the failure of that Court to follow the express language of title 19, and he will certainly use it to his full advantage. But Sarlo will interpret Baroni’s arguments as partisan posturing, instead of honest questions about Albin’s judicial philosophy as it relates to construction of statutes and role of the judiciary.

Justice Albin, as you will recall is a Member of the Wilentz law firm/political machine of Middlesex and Albin earned the hatred of Republican everywhere when, in his first case as a Justice he presided over and ruled for the Torricelli switch.

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