After entering private practice, he became the solicitor of Deptford Township, New Jersey in 1969, and served as the secretary to the Gloucester County Bar Association.
[2] A resident of West Deptford Township, Herman and his Democratic running mate H. Donald Stewart were elected to represent the 3rd Legislative District in the New Jersey General Assembly in 1973, the first election in which the 40-district legislature was established under the terms of the 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Reynolds v. Sims, which required the populations of legislative districts to be as equal as possible.
[1][2] In 1976, Herman sponsored legislation allowing the substitution by pharmacists of generic drugs for their brand-name equivalents and permitting price-based advertising for medications, proposals that were opposed by the pharmaceutical industry, many of whose largest companies were based in New Jersey and brought in $2 billion in revenue a year to the state.
[6] In the November 1983 general election, voters passed a referendum question allowing judges to be transferred to serve in the Family Court section.
[7][8][9][10][11][12] In the 1985 general election, Herman and Pankok lost to Republicans Jack Collins and Gary Stuhltrager by margins of 2,000 votes, as the victors rode the coattails of Governor of New Jersey Thomas Kean's strong election victory that gave the Republicans control of the General Assembly for the first time in more than a decade.