Published in the Asbury Park Press 10/04/04

Faced with longshot odds for defeating an incumbent congressman who has already served 10 consecutive terms in the Third District, Democratic challenger and Assemblyman Herbert C. Conaway Jr. talks as if he's set his sights higher in the 2004 election.

"It's wrong!" exclaims Conaway, 42, a former Air Force doctor from Willingboro who has served in the Assembly since 1997. "And it's particularly wrong for a president who wraps himself in the flag and the military."

Rep. H. James Saxton, R-N.J., is Conaway's nominal target, but when he's stumping, the physician from Willingboro describes a race with two people on each side: Saxton and George W. Bush versus Conaway and John Kerry.

Across one of New Jersey's biggest and most diverse Congressional districts, Saxton and Conaway must tailor their appeals to voters in rural townships, Philadelphia suburbs, retirement villages and the new exurban communities of southern Ocean County. The Third Congressional District covers portions of Ocean, Burlington and Camden counties.

In addition to Saxton and Conaway, other Third District contenders in the Nov. 2 election include Libertarian candidate Frank Orland of Cherry Hill and U.S. Marijuana Party candidate Edward Forchion.

For Saxton, 61, the strategy since the early 1990s has been to align himself with low taxes and economic growth promises of the Republican party, while distancing himself from the GOP leadership's positions on environmental policy. Even in wartime, clean water and open space are crucial issues at the Shore, where New Jersey's surviving natural resources are intimately linked to the local economy and community growth.

"The tough job we're involved with now is addressing the problem of nonpoint source pollution," Saxton said at a recent campaign event where environmental groups lent their endorsement to his re-election campaign.

After a decade when green activists have seen their agenda battered by conservative majorities in Congress, Saxton is one of a few friends the environmental groups still count on the Republican side of the House of Representatives, says Dennis Schvedja of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club.

"He is one of the few congressmen . . . that get an early endorsement," Schvedja said. "National (Sierra Club officials) says, 'We know this guy. He's our friend.' "

Like previous Democratic challengers, Conaway tries to bind Saxton all the more closely to a national GOP that Conaway says has driven clear off the right shoulder of the political road. Middle-class economic insecurity, Social Security and Medicare, and the war in Iraq are big-picture themes Conaway uses to tie this traditionally safe-Republican district race to the great national political divide.

Look at recent votes in Congress to extend tax cuts, Conaway urges his listeners.

"They actually slipped in something that will cut the benefit to people who make $10,000 to $12,000 a year. . . . I think that's outrageous," he says.

Bushera tax cuts weighted toward higher-income taxpayers and deficits "means in a world of scarcity; you're not going to be able to put that money into Medicare," Conaway adds. "That's why we've got to get this crew out of Congress."

Conaway strenuously defends Social Security, an issue he clearly can use in Ocean and Burlington counties' big retirement communities.

Social Security, he tells audiences, "was the government deciding we're not going to have 50 percent of our senior population living in poverty -- because that's where we'd be without Social Security."

Orland, 83, is running mainly to get the message of the Libertarian party out to the electorate. Orland said it's a coherent and principled platform that calls for minimal government intrusion into the individual's life, and maximized individual freedom within the bounds of law.

"People often say, 'Oh, you want to do away with government.' That's anarchism, and we don't advocate that," said Orland, a Navy veteran of World War II who is making his first run for political office.

"Why does an 83-year-old retired emeritus professor of psychiatry run for Congress at this age?" Orland asks rhetorically. "You could call it a lose-win situation.

"I figure Saxton will get something like 65 percent of the vote. But I will win by getting some people to think about libertarianism."

Marijuana legalization advocate Forchion -- better known to his supporters and online audience as the New Jersey Weedman -- maintains marijuana is a recreational drug, and people should be free to use it if they choose.

"I'm not reaching out to Republicans. I'm not reaching out to Democrats. I'm reaching out to potheads. I'm reaching out to the brothers and sisters and anyone who has been victimized and unjustly jailed," said Forchion, 40, who claims he is running simply to get his message out.

This is not the first public office candidacy for Weedman, as Forchion introduces himself. The Pemberton Township resident, a longtime activist, has unsuccessfully run his own campaigns before for Congress and local elections, filed lawsuits against judges and parole officers, and gotten thrown in jail for lighting up at demonstrations and a congressman's office.

"It's a protest to me. I smoke marijuana on a daily basis," says Forchion, a Marine Corps and Army veteran who says that use is a part of his Rastafarian religious beliefs. "I've been in prison for speaking out about marijuana. This is just an extension of that protest . . . and to get people who feel the same way to vote for me."

After a 1997 arrest on charges of possessing with intent to distribute some 40 pounds of marijuana, Forchion took a plea deal that allowed him to serve 17 months of a 10-year prison sentence and then earn release on parole. He landed back in jail for five months when parole officials decided his advocacy of marijuana use and legalization violated his parole terms, and it took a federal judge's order to free him, Forchion says.

Kirk Moore: (732) 557-5728