Lautenberg rises to his latest challenge

Editor's note: This story was originally published on May 30, 2008.

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg is the only senator - Democratic or Republican - facing a major primary challenge this year.

Though he bristles at the distinction, the New Jersey Democrat is living with it by relentlessly excoriating his opponent. He has tapped $1.6 million and counting from his personal fortune and questioned opponent U.S. Rep. Robert E. Andrews' honor, tattooing him with the deadliest of stigmas for a Democrat in a blue-state primary: being a Bush administration cohort, a cheerleader for the Iraq war.

Andrews now opposes the war and more frequently votes with Democrats than with Republicans. He is throwing a few punches of his own in the campaign leading to Tuesday's Democratic primary.

But Lautenberg, a Paterson native and self-made millionaire running for his fifth term, has weathered tougher times.

As a boy, he watched as his father, Samuel, was haunted by loan sharks. The elder Lautenberg, trying to free himself from the mind-numbing work in Paterson's silk mills, had borrowed money to invest in failed business after failed business and never escaped the mills.

Years later, after serving in World War II and graduating with a bachelor's degree in business from Columbia University, Lautenberg returned to Paterson. In a room above a storefront he and two childhood friends started what became the multibillion-dollar payroll-processing company Automatic Data Processing.

He's made mistakes, too. In February 1999 he threw away the job he so clearly cherishes when he announced his retirement from the Senate. Saying that 18 years was enough and that fund-raising had become frustrating, Lautenberg bowed out.

He now says he felt a growing sense of regret within minutes of announcing his retirement. After the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center - where he'd once had an office as chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey - Lautenberg knew he had to get back into the game.

He got his chance in 2002 when his archrival, U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli, was done in by an ethics inquiry during his reelection campaign and party bosses needed a substitute. Two congressmen turned them down before they approached Lautenberg.

"I said, 'That would take some thought . . . OK,' " Lautenberg said and chuckled. "I was more than willing to take the chance. I was anxious to take the chance. It was a dream come true."

So at 78, Lautenberg went back to Washington after winning his shortest race - it lasted two months - and winning by his biggest margin - at 10 percent. Two years later, he married his longtime girlfriend, Bonnie Englebardt; his previous marriage had ended in divorce.

Today, Lautenberg is in another short race, which started April 2 when Andrews, a Camden County Democrat, stunned the political community by announcing he would try to unseat the senior senator. From the beginning, Andrews has indelicately implied that Lautenberg at 84 is too old to run for a fifth term. The senator would be 90 when the term is up.

In his first political battle, in 1982, Lautenberg used code words and phrases, including eccentric, flaky and a national monument, to imply that his opponent, Republican U.S. Rep. Millicent Fenwick, who was 72 at the time, was too old to go to the Senate.

Now Andrews is using the question of age against Lautenberg.

That visibly frustrates Lautenberg, but he has responded by showing that he's techno-savvy and by citing his record.

On a recent afternoon in his Newark office, he thumbed through a directory on his iPhone to show off a picture of himself with Steve Van Zandt, the E-Street Band guitarist who played Silvio Dante on The Sopranos. He said mischievously, "By the way, doesn't he look mean?"

He points to his current term to prove that he's still got it. He returned to the Senate without seniority but says that didn't stop him from getting heard.

On the Senate floor in 2004 he famously held up a poster of a chicken dressed in a military uniform and called Vice President Cheney the "lead chicken hawk." At the time, Republicans and others had cast doubt on the Vietnam War record of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

"I was so damn mad. I was so angry because here they were, flexing muscles and making threats," Lautenberg said. "When it was their turn to do service, none of them, including the president, did their share."

Lightening up, he said, "I don't think Cheney thought it was nice. He never said, 'Thank you.' I never got a note or anything."

War service hasn't been his only gripe with the Bush administration. Lautenberg railed against military contractors, especially Halliburton, of which Cheney was once chairman.

Lautenberg has also worked to ban oil drilling off the New Jersey coast and pushed through a bill that gives the state power to enforce its tough security standards on chemical companies. He has brought billions to Amtrak, helped families get reimbursed for buying body armor for their sons and daughters in the military, and restructured farm subsides with U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar (R., Ind.).

"He's always been the person I rely on the most because he's on [the] Appropriations" Committee, said Monmouth County Democratic U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, who routinely goes to Lautenberg to increase funding for coastal-protection projects.

Pallone said the two also worked on renewing and retooling the Beaches Act, which requires frequent water-quality testing. Their version would require even more frequent testing, faster reporting of problems to the public, and a way to track sources of pollution.

Lautenberg insists he has more to do to fix a sagging economy and battle the threat of terrorism.

Maybe fighting so hard to get into the Senate, leaving and having a second chance is what makes the job so precious to him.

What is certain is his zest for battle. When he talks about his ideology, he says, "I was brought up with a liberal tendency and it stuck. It didn't wash off, no matter how much gasoline the other guys wanted to pour on me."

Age: 84.

Hometown: Cliffside Park, N.J.

Political affiliation: Democrat.

Education: Columbia University (1949).

Political experience: U.S. senator from 1982 to 2001 and since 2003.

Family: Wife Bonnie, four children from his first marriage, and 10 grandchildren.

SOURCE: Associated PressEndText