Stender looks forward and back

by: Jason Springer

Tue Dec 16, 2008 at 06:03:17 PM EST

"My immediate plan is to seek another term to the legislature, and I have great support from the state chair, my county chair, and I've got very good working relationships with my delegation members," she said. "There's a lot of important work to be done, we're in a tough time in our economy and state and I'll be looking forward to taking on those challenges."

"I have a long personal friendship and admiration of Senator Lance and it had nothing to do with Assemblywoman Stender," said Lesniak. "If she wants to run for re-election she has my support."

Today, Stender sought to dispel the notion that her campaign failed in large part because of internal divisions and pressure from outside groups to take on out-of-state staff and focus on less pertinent issues like birth control.

"That stuff is nonsense. It's concocting drama in the aftermath," said Stender, referring to contentions that EMILY's List officials had pressured her to put Washington, DC-based staffers in control of the campaign.

While Stender acknowledged that there was tension between her Garden State staffers and those brought in from Washington, she did not consider it a decisive factor. She pointed out that her narrow loss last year was often blamed on the fact that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) offered too little help, too late.

"Last year the post-mortem was that I lost because I didn't have help from DC. This year I did and the post-mortem is that's the reason I lost," she said.