Martindell was already in her fifties when she became active in Democratic politics . Her brother Blair Clark was the national campaign director for Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 presidential campaign . She attended the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago to show support for McCarthy , as well as for New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Robert B. Meyner , a friend of the family . After the convention , Meyner asked Martindell to become vice chair of the New Jersey Democratic State Committee . At the end of her four-year appointment , local Democrats encouraged Martindell to run for New Jersey Senate in 1973 in a traditionally Republican district encompassing parts of Hunterdon , Mercer , Middlesex and Morris Counties . She managed to beat incumbent State Sen. William E. Schluter in a year when Republicans battled the specter of the Watergate scandal and Democrats were buoyed by the landslide victory of Brendan Byrne as Governor of New Jersey
1968 Democratic National Convention
1968 Democratic National Convention
Anne Clark Martindell