election to state offices, although in these cases the office sought is usually one of the state's highest political posts, typically governor - one such recent example being the aforementioned Mike Pence who was a sitting U.S. Representative when he was first elected governor. Also typically permitted is for one person to seek multiple offices at the same level of government in the same election, although attempting to simultaneously seek multiple offices in the same branch of government (e.g. a sitting U.S. Representative seeking re-election to the House and election to the U.S. Senate) is severely frowned on and prohibited in many states (the constitutionality of these prohibitions is uncertain). Recent examples include the 2000, 2008, and 2012 presidential elections where Senators Joe Lieberman, Joe Biden and Representative Paul Ryan respectively sought re-election and election to the vice presidency - only Biden was successfully elected vice president, but all three were re-elected to the offices in which they were the incumbents. Florida In April 1984, Governor of Florida Bob Graham received legislation that passed unanimously in both houses of the Florida Legislature that would forbid public officials from receiving retirement pay and regular pay simultaneously for the same position. Illinois In August 2008, Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich proposed legislation that would prohibit dual-office holding as part of changes to the state's ethics bill, stating that "dual government employment creates the potential for a conflict of interest because a legislator's duties to his or her constituents and his or her public employer are not always consistent." Critics, such as Representative Susana Mendoza, called the actions "spite" on the part of the governor. New Jersey Fulfilling a campaign pledge that he had made when first running for the New Jersey Legislature, Jack Sinagra sponsored a bill passed by the New Jersey Senate in 1992 that would ban the practice. At the time that the legislation first passed, there were some twenty elected officials who served in the New Jersey Legislature and another elected office, including Assemblyman Bill Pascrell, who was also mayor of Paterson, New Jersey; State Senator Ronald Rice, who also served on the Newark City Council; and Assemblyman John E. Rooney, who was also mayor of Northvale. These officials protested the proposed ban as interfering with the will of voters to elect officials as they see fit. A newspaper called former State senator Wayne R. Bryant the "king of