Last of two candidate profiles.

At a council meeting in Bogota, Steve Lonegan stood up to ask the mayor a question: What can the borough do about the noisy, low-flying planes over town?

"They were so close, you could see the pilots in the windows," Lonegan said recently. "The mayor said, 'There's nothing you can do. If you want to do something, run for mayor.' "

Lonegan, who owned a cabinetmaking business, went home that night in 1994, thought about the mayor's suggestion, and decided to take him up on it.

"I'm not the kind of guy you challenge like that," he said.

Lonegan worked to reenergize the Bergen County borough's weak Republican Party and managed the campaigns of two Borough Council candidates. He then successfully ran for mayor in 1995 in the heavily Democratic town, was reelected twice, and won his fight to reduce aircraft noise by changing flight patterns at nearby Teterboro Airport.

In or out of office, the 53-year-old Republican - now running in Tuesday's gubernatorial primary - speaks his mind and ruffles feathers, even those of leaders in his own party. Friends and foes describe him as fiercely competitive, mercurial, driven, energetic, brusque, acerbic, and confident.

"What's unique about Steve Lonegan is how specific he is," said Ben Dworkin, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University and an adjunct political-science professor at Rider. "Most of the time, if you're not the incumbent you stay vague. You don't promise anything too specific.

"You talk about what you want to do, not how you're going to do it," Dworkin added. "The conventional wisdom says if you get too specific you upset a lot of people, but 2009 may be a different year because people are looking for someone to be specific."

Lonegan, a staunch conservative, said he would impose a flat tax of 2.9 percent on state residents - a rate, he said, that would eventually fall.

He would abolish property-tax rebates and equalize state aid to schools, resulting, he said, in declining property taxes. He also would cut business taxes, slash the state budget by 20 percent, and lay off thousands of workers, who he said would land jobs in the private sector.

"I'm a results-driven individual," he said. "I want to set forth what the goal will be and reach that goal."

Lonegan has been setting goals, even in the face of severe challenges, since he grew up in Ridgefield Park, Bergen County. When 14, he learned he has retinitis pigmentosa, a disease that slowly causes blindness. When Lonegan was 16, his father, Arthur, died of an aortic aneurysm, and the family moved in with his mother's parents.

But the personal setbacks, far from discouraging Lonegan, seemed to instill in him a sense of self-reliance.

He said they helped mold his character, along with "my upbringing by Italian grandparents, who were immigrants off the boat. I was raised in an environment where hard work and commitment were part of everything."

In high school, Lonegan became a football player and record-setting hurdler. He went on to earn his bachelor of science degree in business administration from William Paterson College and a master of business administration degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University.

After school, he started and sold his cabinetmaking business. He also was a homebuilder.

"When I became mayor, I had never served in government before," he said. "I brought my business savvy into government, and it sometimes got me into controversial positions, raising the ire of union bosses and employee groups."

Among those coming into office with Lonegan was Nick Zampetti, who served on the council for nine years. A Lonegan neighbor, he described the mayor as driven and passionate about public service.

"Steve is the only one with the moxie, backbone, and fortitude to fight the uphill battle in this primary and against the obstacles he would face as governor," said Zampetti, who has two Lonegan campaign signs on his lawn and "Dump Corzine" bumper stickers on his car.