What’s good for the Gooch is good for the… candidate? Two views of Diane Gooch at the Molly Pitcher Inn last night. (Click to enlarge)

Two River Times publisher Diane Gooch announced her run for Congress last night to a packed ballroom at Red Bank’s Molly Pitcher Inn.

The Rumson resident and wife of Wall Street gazillionaire Mickey Gooch promised to bring “common sense” to Washington if she’s successful in ousting sixth-district incumbent Democrat Frank Pallone.

What redbankgreen really wanted to hear the first-time GOP candidate talk about, though, was her fondness for taking photos of strangers’ heinies.

And maybe snap a dorsal shot of her ourselves.

The Comment/No Comment feature in a 2006 issue of Gooch’s TRT: The Book. (Click to enlarge)

A little background is in order here.

In addition to the weekly newspaper she and her husband bought from Geraldo Rivera in 2004, Gooch also publishes a magazine called “TRT: The Book.” (A “book” is what people who work in the magazine industry call magazines, but never mind.) The Book, which caters to the carriage trade, has been on hiatus for a year because of the recession’s impact on advertising, Gooch says.

Before it went dark, each issue of The Book included in its high-gloss pages a two-page photo feature, with pictures credited to Gooch herself, called “Comment/No Comment.”

On the Comment page were photos of unidentified shoppers, beachgoers and the like, displaying fashion sense that Gooch apparently approved of, though there was no accompanying text: just photos of women, usually, in fitted skirts, adorable prints or stylish hats.

On the No Comment page were unmistakably unflattering pictures of women in too-tight pants, undersized bathing suits, or with their plumber’s smiles showing.

What the pictures had in common was that they appeared to have been taken from a distance without the subjects’ knowledge. Overwhelmingly, they also focused on tuchases.

We’re talking a double truck of dainty derrieres, bulging backsides and flappity mud flaps.

Prior to Gooch’s formal announcement last night, redbankgreen finagled a short sit-down with her. With one of her handlers impatiently urging us to stick to questions about her campaign, we asked Gooch whether she regretted taking and publishing the photos.

“I don’t think I did anything that was hurtful,” she said. “It was supposed to be light and fun.”

She said she had appeared in the No Comment page herself, face-down after a bumpy ride in a fighter jet, and once published a shot of her own sister’s butt, though she didn’t say which page that one ran on.

“Sometimes you just have to give people a break and have some fun,” Gooch said.

We couldn’t agree more.