The year brought the retirement of two legislative champions: Senator Ronald L. Rice, Democrat from Newark; and Senator Mike Doherty, Republican of Warren County.

Their retirement is significant.

Both Rice and Doherty served our country in uniform, the former in the Marine Corps and the latter in the United States Army, and brought to elected office a shared sense of sacrifice, moral responsibility and integrity.

In addition, those qualities imparted to both men the value of independence, especially in machine-dominated New Jersey politics.

Neither Rice nor Doherty ever did exactly what some powerful entity or political organization told him; and in fact, mostly did the opposite in the name of serving their constituents.

We don’t want to give the impression that a person’s service in the military gives him a leg up on morality or legislative duty. It doesn’t. History provides countless examples to the contrary. But in these two cases, we found in Rice and in Doherty a similar robustness of public purpose, and routine willingness to contravene power (Rice typically with the Norcross Machine, and Doherty with the Chris Christie Administration, which in many ways amounted to the same cross-party uber base) when it counted.

Rice displayed his independent drive most recently during the debate over marijuana legalization, where he undertook the public position of decriminalization and expungement and managed to secure part of what he sought on the social justice front…

Download the 2022 Retrospective here or view it below: