Politics NJ:
Clifford M. Sobel, a businessman and major Republican fund-raiser who will step down as the United States Ambassador to the Netherlands this summer, has told Republicans in New Jersey that he is considering launching a bid for the party's 2006 U.S. Senate nomination when he returns to the Garden State.
In the last month, two top state Republicans, state GOP Chairman Tom Wilson and Lewis M. Eisenberg, the former finance chairman for the Republican national chairman, met with Sobel in separate visits to The Hague. Neither Eisenberg nor Wilson would comment on what was discussed.
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A Senate run would pit Sobel, who has maintained a residence in Short Hills while abroad, in a primary against State Sen. Thomas H. Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), who is already raising money for '06 and who has spent nearly two years traversing the state to court county and local GOP leaders.
It might also encourage other Republicans to enter the race, creating a crowded, unruly and potentially divisive primary. Friends describe Sobel as sharing the same moderate-to-liberal sensibilities of former Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, for whom he was a top fund-raiser. Kean, who went public in March with his Senate plans in an effort to clear out other aspirants, occupies similar ideological turf.
"There would be room on the right and as we've learned this primary season, there seems to be no shortage of candidates on the right who are ready to step forward," noted David Rebovich, the director of Rider University's Institute for New Jersey Politics.
