Published in the Courier News, Tuesday, August 26, 2008
August 25, 2008
Assemblyman calls for freeze on funds
for Solaris upgrades at JFK Medical Center
By MARK SPIVEY
STAFF WRITER
State Assemblyman Jerry Green will ask the state Department of Health and Senior Services to put a hold on possible approval of nearly $170 million in bonds for Solaris Health System, the nonprofit parent company of the recently-closed Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center in Plainfield and JFK Medical Center in Edison.
It was first reported nearly three weeks ago that Solaris had requested a $169 million bond issue to pay for expansions and renovations at JFK and to refinance the debt of the two hospitals.
Green. D-22nd Dist., said he will ask that those funds be put in limbo until specific grievances regarding Muhlenberg's closure are directly addressed by the state.
"This is no longer people hollering that "I want to see Muhlenberg stay open,' " Green said yesterday. "Now the argument from the people in the community is...that they support the (Department of Health) Commissioner (Heather Howard) and the treasurer not moving forward with this bond issue until they get some questions answered."
State Department of Health and Senior Services spokesperson Dawn Thomas confirmed yesterday that Howard and state officials had scheduled a meeting with Green for Sept. 3 in Trenton, but would not comment on the nature of the meeting.
Solaris' bond request was originally scheduled to go before the New Jersey Health Care Facilities Financing Authority in Trenton on Thursday, Aug. 28, but company spokesman Steven Weiss said yesterday the date has been pushed back to sometime in September.
Green outlined a number of issues his task force planned to discuss with the commissioner, including a claim that state-mandated transportation service to other area hospitals offered to Plainfield residents by Solaris does not currently meet the department's standards and the fact that the company has refused to publicly release an asking price for prospective buyers of the 131-year-old hospital.
Another issue Green said he planned to discuss with state health officials is the existence of a potential buyer for Muhlenberg who has claimed massive delays in arranging a tour of the Plainfield campus. A person from within DBR Healthcare, a Philadelphia-based coalition of investors, said earlier this month that his group had been attempting to arrange an evaluation of the hospital grounds since April, but only received approval the Thursday before the hospital's closure.
Green said he is also seeking detailed documentation of Solaris' financial records, ranging from a 10-year revenue report down to a list of all the assets and property on the Plainfield campus and how much is owed on each by the company.
"The community needs to know, because over the last 130 years, the community has not only used this facility, but donated money to it," Green said. "We need to get a clear picture of exactly what Solaris paid for the property, but also what they owe on the property...they're asking the state to back these bonds, so there should be the ability for the state to ask these questions."
In response to the assemblyman's statements, Weiss claimed that Solaris' transportation services to the Plainfield community not only meet the state's requirements, but that the state has already confirmed as much.
"The Department of Health has sent people to look at our transportation to make sure we are meeting the requirements of the certificate of need (for closure)," Weiss said, "and they have been pleased with our efforts to not only comply, but exceed."
Weiss also said that Solaris is annually audited by a private firm and that the information stemming from those audits is available to the public on the company's Web site.
In response to Green's statement that the public is interested in knowing what collateral the company plans to offer in seeking approval of its loan, Weiss said that a working group will discuss the matter this week.
But Weiss said his company was not yet prepared to discuss what, if any, parts of the 17-acre Plainfield campus are currently up for sale, or to publicly issue any specific asking price.
"Solaris won't speculate on the price or the use of the campus in the future when, right now, we are putting all of our efforts into satisfying and exceeding the conditions set forth in the certificate of need (approval)," Weiss said. "The bottom line is, we're not there yet."
Solaris' original bond request called for $22.2 million in capital improvements, while the rest would go toward debt restructuring. The largest chunk of capital-improvement money was to go toward 59 additional inpatient beds at JFK, with other funds being used to expand the emergency room and renovate the cardiac catheterization lab and hyperbaric wound center.
Plainfield Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs, who said Muhlenberg would be a key topic of discussion for a community forum to be held at 6:30 tonight by the city at Washington Community School, said the assemblyman has the city's support regarding his planned meeting with state officials.
"I'll tell you, this is a mutual request," Robinson-Briggs said yesterday regarding Green's stance. "We also want the state to please hold back on giving this loan to Solaris."
Mark Spivey can be reached at mspivey@mycentraljersey.com or 908-707-3144.
http://www.mycentraljersey.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080825/NEWS/808250346
Online story here. Archived here.
(Note: Online stories may be taken down by their publisher after a period of time or made available for a fee. Links posted here is from the original online publication of this piece.)
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Monday, August 25, 2008
Landlords - Herald News - Towns look for overcrowding, illegal apartments
Published in the Herald News, August 22, 2008
Landlords take heat on illegal dwellings
Towns start looking harder for lawbreakers
By KAREN KELLER and JENNIFER CUNNINGHAM, STAFF WRITER | 08/22/08 02:01 AM
Clifton reports an uptick in the number of illegally rented attics and cellars. In January, North Haledon landlords of two-family houses will have to register tenants' names with the city.
For three municipalities, there are three different ways officials are taking a closer look at illegal dwellings. But the message is the same: Landlords, beware. Officials say they're intent on protecting tenants' safety.
Illegal dwellings often lack bathrooms or kitchens and create fire hazards by restricting tenants' access to exits.
In the event of a fire or accident, emergency personnel need to know just how many people are living in a home, and where, officials said.
Fires can start easily near boilers in cellars or from a hot plate. In August 2006, two Englewood men living in what officials said was an illegal basement dwelling died in a fire.
Aside from safety, illegal dwellings stretch municipal services, schools and strain infrastructure -- leaving residents in legal properties to pick up the tax and utility tabs.
In Passaic -- a starter community for new immigrants -- cash-hungry landlords have always rented attics and cellars without permits to people willing to squeeze into small spaces, officials said. But acting Mayor Gary Schaer, who took the helm in May, is intensifying the hunt.
It's part of the mayor's larger goal of improving the quality of life in the city, he said. In addition to checking for illegal apartments, inspectors issue summonses for property maintenance violations such as uncut lawns.
"The purpose here is not revenue enhancement. It's to put a clean, fresh face on the city," Schaer said.
Two inspectors take turns going out four nights a week, and twice a week during the day, said Angelo Pallotto, an inspector. That's up from roughly two nights a week in years past, and once every two months during the day.
The daytime inspections are carried out as part of the city's "Clean Sweeps" project, in which a team of a dozen other city inspectors, including fire, public works and health officials, pick several blocks to inspect during a three-hour period, rotating each week among the city's four wards. The city started "Clean Sweeps" once every two months in 2001 and now conducts them twice a week.
Pallotto said many landlords say they are unaware of the law. Offenders' common explanation is that when they bought the dwelling, their real estate agent or bank told them they could rent out every room, Pallotto said.
"When you buy the property, the bank says it's OK," said Paul Ramirez, 40, a landlord who also owns a mechanics shop. "You have to rent all the space you have."
He said he bought a single-family house on Hope Avenue two years ago and received a violation notice in June for renting the attic and cellar space illegally. He said it's impossible to pay his $5,000 mortgage without renting every room.
"How are you going to pay for a property for that much [monthly overhead]?" he asked. Ramirez's father, a signatory on papers for the house, pleaded guilty in municipal court Thursday to the offenses. The pair now owe the city roughly $2,000 in fines.
In Clifton, the economy, property taxes and the mortgage crisis have led to an increase in the number of illegal dwellings found in the city, local officials said. The city's six code enforcement inspectors found 70 illegal dwellings in Clifton from January to June, up from the 43 found during the same time last year, public records show.
"I think it's more of the mortgage crisis than anything else," Sam DeGrose, head of the city's code enforcement department. "There's a lot of foreclosures in town."
DeGrose said that as many homeowners refinance their adjustable mortgage rates, they are forced to find new ways to pay their mortgage every month.
"We found two-family houses where the owner moved to the basement and rented out the two apartments, just to pay the mortgage," DeGrose said.
Inspectors look for multiple doorbells, air-conditioning units in attics and cellars, multiple names of tenants on mailboxes and people moving in and out, said Mayor James Anzaldi. But tips from neighbors are the best indicator, he said.
In North Haledon, a town with relatively few renters, the borough hasn't had a problem with illegal housing, but wants to be proactive, said Mayor Randy George. Next year, the borough is undergoing a tax reassessment, the first in decades, and the city is taking advantage of the timing to begin a tenants' registry, George said.
Landlords of every two-family house will have to pay $50 annually to register names of tenants. North Haledon has 241 two-family houses, George said.
"It's a hot-button issue that we've been reading about in other towns, and we just want to make sure we're ahead of it," he said. "It's not for money but for public safety."
Thursday mornings in Passaic are landlords' day in court.
Outside the courtroom, Pallotto, the inspector, clutched files on 10 cases in which he'd testified. Seven were for illegal dwellings. His files contained photos. One showed an attic bedroom with an unmade bed near a tiny window that looked out onto a roof next door. In the room was a Winnie the Pooh teddy bear.
"A picture is worth a thousand words," Pallotto said.
Comments
Posted by Dominick on 08/25/08 12:18 AM:
I said it before and I'll say it again : If the towns are serious about cracking down on illegal dwellings, offer a reward for information. Clifton does this for people who inform about students illegally attending city schools and it has worked incredibly. By the way, Mayor George is full of it. It's always about the money with these crooks. How does paying $50 make the public safer?
Landlords take heat on illegal dwellings
Towns start looking harder for lawbreakers
By KAREN KELLER and JENNIFER CUNNINGHAM, STAFF WRITER | 08/22/08 02:01 AM
[image]Passaic is cracking down on illegal dwellings, with inspectors hitting city streets day and night.
Paul Ramirez says that a hefty mortgage payment each month has forced him to rent out rooms in his Hope Avenue property, which he purchased two years ago in Passaic. (MICHAEL KARAS/Staff Photographer)
Clifton reports an uptick in the number of illegally rented attics and cellars. In January, North Haledon landlords of two-family houses will have to register tenants' names with the city.
For three municipalities, there are three different ways officials are taking a closer look at illegal dwellings. But the message is the same: Landlords, beware. Officials say they're intent on protecting tenants' safety.
Illegal dwellings often lack bathrooms or kitchens and create fire hazards by restricting tenants' access to exits.
In the event of a fire or accident, emergency personnel need to know just how many people are living in a home, and where, officials said.
Fires can start easily near boilers in cellars or from a hot plate. In August 2006, two Englewood men living in what officials said was an illegal basement dwelling died in a fire.
Aside from safety, illegal dwellings stretch municipal services, schools and strain infrastructure -- leaving residents in legal properties to pick up the tax and utility tabs.
In Passaic -- a starter community for new immigrants -- cash-hungry landlords have always rented attics and cellars without permits to people willing to squeeze into small spaces, officials said. But acting Mayor Gary Schaer, who took the helm in May, is intensifying the hunt.
It's part of the mayor's larger goal of improving the quality of life in the city, he said. In addition to checking for illegal apartments, inspectors issue summonses for property maintenance violations such as uncut lawns.
"The purpose here is not revenue enhancement. It's to put a clean, fresh face on the city," Schaer said.
Two inspectors take turns going out four nights a week, and twice a week during the day, said Angelo Pallotto, an inspector. That's up from roughly two nights a week in years past, and once every two months during the day.
The daytime inspections are carried out as part of the city's "Clean Sweeps" project, in which a team of a dozen other city inspectors, including fire, public works and health officials, pick several blocks to inspect during a three-hour period, rotating each week among the city's four wards. The city started "Clean Sweeps" once every two months in 2001 and now conducts them twice a week.
Pallotto said many landlords say they are unaware of the law. Offenders' common explanation is that when they bought the dwelling, their real estate agent or bank told them they could rent out every room, Pallotto said.
"When you buy the property, the bank says it's OK," said Paul Ramirez, 40, a landlord who also owns a mechanics shop. "You have to rent all the space you have."
He said he bought a single-family house on Hope Avenue two years ago and received a violation notice in June for renting the attic and cellar space illegally. He said it's impossible to pay his $5,000 mortgage without renting every room.
"How are you going to pay for a property for that much [monthly overhead]?" he asked. Ramirez's father, a signatory on papers for the house, pleaded guilty in municipal court Thursday to the offenses. The pair now owe the city roughly $2,000 in fines.
In Clifton, the economy, property taxes and the mortgage crisis have led to an increase in the number of illegal dwellings found in the city, local officials said. The city's six code enforcement inspectors found 70 illegal dwellings in Clifton from January to June, up from the 43 found during the same time last year, public records show.
"I think it's more of the mortgage crisis than anything else," Sam DeGrose, head of the city's code enforcement department. "There's a lot of foreclosures in town."
DeGrose said that as many homeowners refinance their adjustable mortgage rates, they are forced to find new ways to pay their mortgage every month.
"We found two-family houses where the owner moved to the basement and rented out the two apartments, just to pay the mortgage," DeGrose said.
Inspectors look for multiple doorbells, air-conditioning units in attics and cellars, multiple names of tenants on mailboxes and people moving in and out, said Mayor James Anzaldi. But tips from neighbors are the best indicator, he said.
In North Haledon, a town with relatively few renters, the borough hasn't had a problem with illegal housing, but wants to be proactive, said Mayor Randy George. Next year, the borough is undergoing a tax reassessment, the first in decades, and the city is taking advantage of the timing to begin a tenants' registry, George said.
Landlords of every two-family house will have to pay $50 annually to register names of tenants. North Haledon has 241 two-family houses, George said.
"It's a hot-button issue that we've been reading about in other towns, and we just want to make sure we're ahead of it," he said. "It's not for money but for public safety."
Thursday mornings in Passaic are landlords' day in court.
Outside the courtroom, Pallotto, the inspector, clutched files on 10 cases in which he'd testified. Seven were for illegal dwellings. His files contained photos. One showed an attic bedroom with an unmade bed near a tiny window that looked out onto a roof next door. In the room was a Winnie the Pooh teddy bear.
"A picture is worth a thousand words," Pallotto said.
Comments
Posted by Dominick on 08/25/08 12:18 AM:
I said it before and I'll say it again : If the towns are serious about cracking down on illegal dwellings, offer a reward for information. Clifton does this for people who inform about students illegally attending city schools and it has worked incredibly. By the way, Mayor George is full of it. It's always about the money with these crooks. How does paying $50 make the public safer?
Saturday, August 23, 2008
7th Congressional District - Wfd Leader - Stender, Lance to debate 9/16
Westfield Leader, 8/22/2008
Lance and Stender to
Debate September 16 in Scotch Plains
SCOTCH PLAINS – Two candidates vying for Congressional representation in the 7th District, Republican State Senator Leonard Lance (LD-23, Clinton) and Democratic Assemblywoman Linda Stender (LD-22, Fanwood) will debate for the first time at 7:15 p.m. on Tuesday, September 16.
The Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey will host the debate at their offices, located at 1391 Martine Avenue in Scotch Plains.
The event will offer voters insight into critical issues, including key domestic and foreign policy questions. The race, to fill the seat vacated by retiring Republican Mike Ferguson, is likely to be one of the most closely watched in the country.
Organizations co-sponsoring this event include: American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League New Jersey, Community Relations Committee of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, JCC of Central New Jersey, Jewish Community Relations Council of Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County, National Jewish Democratic Council, New Jersey State Association of Jewish Federations, Republican Jewish Coalition, Westfield Chapter of Hadassah, and The Workmen’s Circle/Arbeiter Ring.
Lance and Stender to
Debate September 16 in Scotch Plains
SCOTCH PLAINS – Two candidates vying for Congressional representation in the 7th District, Republican State Senator Leonard Lance (LD-23, Clinton) and Democratic Assemblywoman Linda Stender (LD-22, Fanwood) will debate for the first time at 7:15 p.m. on Tuesday, September 16.
The Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey will host the debate at their offices, located at 1391 Martine Avenue in Scotch Plains.
The event will offer voters insight into critical issues, including key domestic and foreign policy questions. The race, to fill the seat vacated by retiring Republican Mike Ferguson, is likely to be one of the most closely watched in the country.
Organizations co-sponsoring this event include: American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League New Jersey, Community Relations Committee of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, JCC of Central New Jersey, Jewish Community Relations Council of Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County, National Jewish Democratic Council, New Jersey State Association of Jewish Federations, Republican Jewish Coalition, Westfield Chapter of Hadassah, and The Workmen’s Circle/Arbeiter Ring.
Cohen replacement - PolitckerNJ - Quijano wins narrowly, 87-82
PolitickerNJ - Wednesday, July 20, 2008
August 19, 2008 - 8:34pm
Quijano narrowly wins Cohen seat
By Matt Friedman
Category: LocalTags: Patricia Perkins-Auguste, Annette Quijano
MOUNTAINSIDE -- Attorney Annette Quijano came to the Union County Democratic Committee’s special election tonight as the party leaders’ favorite to replace former Assemblyman Neil Cohen in District 20, but Elizabeth Councilwoman Patricia Perkins-Auguste put up a serious fight.
Quijano, 46, an assistant counsel to Gov. Corzine, bested Perkins-Auguste 87-82 in a vote by county committee members from the legislative district’s four towns: Elizabeth, Kenilworth, Roselle and Union. It’s the first time a minority will fill a seat in the district, which despite having a minority-majority population, has long been represented by three white men.
Quijano’s term begins immediately. She replaces former Assemblyman Neil Cohen, who resigned from his seat amid allegations that he possessed child pornography on his legislative office computer. She will have to run again against a Republican in November to hold the seat, although the district’s registration breakdown makes her a near shoe-in.
Perkins-Auguste and Quijano both gave speeches in front of the committee members, but although members were voting to send a new legislator to Trenton, the meeting was closed to the press and general public.
The controversy surrounding Cohen made the occasion a little more somber than it otherwise would have been for Quijano.
“I’m excited, but I’m not. I’m saddened because these are the circumstances,” said Quijano, who didn’t let the accusation against Cohen get in the way of what she saw as an altruistic legislative legacy.
“I always admired Neil for being such an advocate for the people, and I have, as I see it, big shoes to try to fill. I used to sit in his Assembly financial institution committee and I saw first-hand how he was an advocate for the people,” she said.
Quijano, whose name did not pop up in the initial field of candidates, said that she was approached by “a few people” about running for the position. Although she’s never run for a legislative seat before, Quijano said that she’s always wanted to fill one.
But with such a whirlwind candidacy, Quijano hadn’t yet outlined much of her legislative agenda.
“I’m going to represent people in my community. We’re going through a tough economic period and I want to make sure that seniors don’t have to decide between groceries and medication. I want to bring jobs back into the district,” she said.
In her speech to the committee members – provided in written form after the meeting – Quijano listed her experience as a past experience as a campaign volunteer, her work as the Clerk of the Union County Freeholder board, and her work in as an assistant counsel during the McGreevey, Codey and Corzine administrations. She said that she would work to improve schools, fight for aid for cities and stabilize property taxes.
There were actually two votes tonight—one to send a legislator to fill part of Cohen’s unexpired term, and one on who should get the party’s nomination for the November election. After her defeat on the first vote, Perkins-Auguste moved to make the second vote unanimous for Quijano.
Despite that gracious move, however, Perkins-Auguste, who’s African-American, was critical of Quijano, accusing her of using her Hispanic heritage as a campaign ploy in a district where Hispanics outnumber blacks.
“She stood up there and said she was Latino… Basically she race-baited, but she’s entitled to that. You use what you have to your advantage.” she said.
Among Perkins-Auguste's allies was Joseph Adair, a reverend and relocation officer from Elizabeth who used to run the local NAACP has long been the councilwoman's political ally.
While not a county committee member himself, Adair bussed in 25 members from Elizabeth to support Perkins-Auguste, who he said had a better record of public service than Quijano.
“I don’t even know who[Quijano] is. I’ve lived in Union County for 46 years. Never heard of her. I have a problem with that," he said.
Although the local party’s heavy hitters like State Sen. Ray Lesniak, Assemblyman/Democratic State Chairman Joe Cryan and County Chairwoman Charlotte DeFilippo remained officially neutral, Perkins-Auguste cast herself as the rebel candidate against the machine. She did, however, have Elizabeth Mayor J. Christian Bollwage – a close Lesniak ally—behind her. Perkins-Auguste also expressed disappointment that committee members from Roselle went with Quijano instead of her.
“I went up against the machine, the political power brokers of the stat eof New Jersey. I lost by five votes. Ray Lesniak, Joe Cryan and Charlotte DeFilippo. People I have great respect for,” she said. “I believe in God and that’s who I get my direction from. I don’t believe in backroom politics. I believe in serving the people.”
Freeholder Director Angel Estrada, who took his name out of the mix for the seat after he found that “the numbers didn’t add up,” was forthright about the importance of the seat being filled by a person of Hispanic heritage.
“The 20th legislative district is a Latino district, no matter what anybody claims,” he said. “The reality is we need to start recognizing Latinos' contribution to our society in terms of the work we do every day.”
Quijano, however, disputed Perkins-Auguste’s claim that her ethnicity is what ultimately won her the seat.
“I can’t say it’s solely because I’m latino. If you saw a number of individuals here, they were from a lot of nationalities, and I want to represent all of the community.
Defilippo, meanwhile, played up the fact that the race for the seat came down to two women, showcasing what she said was an effort to recruit more women into local government.
“I think were both were very articulate, but Annette has a depth of government experience,” she said.
-------------------------------------------
Update: Below is the response from Union County Republican Chairman Phil Morin.
"Tonight, the Union County Democratic machine had an opportunity to fill a disgraced former assemblyman's seat with a fresh face of change. Instead, party insiders have selected someone who represents more of the same. Instead of choosing someone who will change the culture of corruption in Trenton, they have chosen someone who is inextricably linked with the failed policies of the Corzine and McGreevey administrations. Undoubtedly, the newest member of the Trenton aristocracy will be a loyal footsoldier who will blindly vote for higher property taxes, bigger government and sweetheart deals for connected insiders.
It is hard to believe that someone who has served as legal counsel for Governor Corzine and undoubtedly advised him on initiatives such as the ill-fated toll tax plan to the latest COAH tax legislative disaster will be any different than her predecessor, who was more concerned with sparing a vicious dog's life than reducing the financial pressures on the overtaxed citizens of the 20th District.
Address :
Comments
Lesniak? DeFillippo? Cryan?
posted by Mr. Democrat
Was Quijano the candidate of Lesniak? I hadn't seen that reported anywhere.
Very close race. Makes it seem like the Bosses aren't in solid control (unless they just didn't have a preference between the two).
08/19/08 8:46 pm
------------------------------------------------
Phil Morin -A stand up guy offers good insights and interesting
posted by KathyCallahan
analysis of the -same old same old unispired and entirely predictable machine.
08/20/08 7:44 am
----------------------------------------------
They are in control, the bosses
posted by bitaryo
Remember the meeting was closed to the press and the public. What is reported is stage managed.
Still can't figure out why it is a Latino district with only a 24% share of the population.
08/20/08 7:52 am
Address :
August 19, 2008 - 8:34pm
Quijano narrowly wins Cohen seat
By Matt Friedman
Category: LocalTags: Patricia Perkins-Auguste, Annette Quijano
MOUNTAINSIDE -- Attorney Annette Quijano came to the Union County Democratic Committee’s special election tonight as the party leaders’ favorite to replace former Assemblyman Neil Cohen in District 20, but Elizabeth Councilwoman Patricia Perkins-Auguste put up a serious fight.
Quijano, 46, an assistant counsel to Gov. Corzine, bested Perkins-Auguste 87-82 in a vote by county committee members from the legislative district’s four towns: Elizabeth, Kenilworth, Roselle and Union. It’s the first time a minority will fill a seat in the district, which despite having a minority-majority population, has long been represented by three white men.
Quijano’s term begins immediately. She replaces former Assemblyman Neil Cohen, who resigned from his seat amid allegations that he possessed child pornography on his legislative office computer. She will have to run again against a Republican in November to hold the seat, although the district’s registration breakdown makes her a near shoe-in.
Perkins-Auguste and Quijano both gave speeches in front of the committee members, but although members were voting to send a new legislator to Trenton, the meeting was closed to the press and general public.
The controversy surrounding Cohen made the occasion a little more somber than it otherwise would have been for Quijano.
“I’m excited, but I’m not. I’m saddened because these are the circumstances,” said Quijano, who didn’t let the accusation against Cohen get in the way of what she saw as an altruistic legislative legacy.
“I always admired Neil for being such an advocate for the people, and I have, as I see it, big shoes to try to fill. I used to sit in his Assembly financial institution committee and I saw first-hand how he was an advocate for the people,” she said.
Quijano, whose name did not pop up in the initial field of candidates, said that she was approached by “a few people” about running for the position. Although she’s never run for a legislative seat before, Quijano said that she’s always wanted to fill one.
But with such a whirlwind candidacy, Quijano hadn’t yet outlined much of her legislative agenda.
“I’m going to represent people in my community. We’re going through a tough economic period and I want to make sure that seniors don’t have to decide between groceries and medication. I want to bring jobs back into the district,” she said.
In her speech to the committee members – provided in written form after the meeting – Quijano listed her experience as a past experience as a campaign volunteer, her work as the Clerk of the Union County Freeholder board, and her work in as an assistant counsel during the McGreevey, Codey and Corzine administrations. She said that she would work to improve schools, fight for aid for cities and stabilize property taxes.
There were actually two votes tonight—one to send a legislator to fill part of Cohen’s unexpired term, and one on who should get the party’s nomination for the November election. After her defeat on the first vote, Perkins-Auguste moved to make the second vote unanimous for Quijano.
Despite that gracious move, however, Perkins-Auguste, who’s African-American, was critical of Quijano, accusing her of using her Hispanic heritage as a campaign ploy in a district where Hispanics outnumber blacks.
“She stood up there and said she was Latino… Basically she race-baited, but she’s entitled to that. You use what you have to your advantage.” she said.
Among Perkins-Auguste's allies was Joseph Adair, a reverend and relocation officer from Elizabeth who used to run the local NAACP has long been the councilwoman's political ally.
While not a county committee member himself, Adair bussed in 25 members from Elizabeth to support Perkins-Auguste, who he said had a better record of public service than Quijano.
“I don’t even know who[Quijano] is. I’ve lived in Union County for 46 years. Never heard of her. I have a problem with that," he said.
Although the local party’s heavy hitters like State Sen. Ray Lesniak, Assemblyman/Democratic State Chairman Joe Cryan and County Chairwoman Charlotte DeFilippo remained officially neutral, Perkins-Auguste cast herself as the rebel candidate against the machine. She did, however, have Elizabeth Mayor J. Christian Bollwage – a close Lesniak ally—behind her. Perkins-Auguste also expressed disappointment that committee members from Roselle went with Quijano instead of her.
“I went up against the machine, the political power brokers of the stat eof New Jersey. I lost by five votes. Ray Lesniak, Joe Cryan and Charlotte DeFilippo. People I have great respect for,” she said. “I believe in God and that’s who I get my direction from. I don’t believe in backroom politics. I believe in serving the people.”
Freeholder Director Angel Estrada, who took his name out of the mix for the seat after he found that “the numbers didn’t add up,” was forthright about the importance of the seat being filled by a person of Hispanic heritage.
“The 20th legislative district is a Latino district, no matter what anybody claims,” he said. “The reality is we need to start recognizing Latinos' contribution to our society in terms of the work we do every day.”
Quijano, however, disputed Perkins-Auguste’s claim that her ethnicity is what ultimately won her the seat.
“I can’t say it’s solely because I’m latino. If you saw a number of individuals here, they were from a lot of nationalities, and I want to represent all of the community.
Defilippo, meanwhile, played up the fact that the race for the seat came down to two women, showcasing what she said was an effort to recruit more women into local government.
“I think were both were very articulate, but Annette has a depth of government experience,” she said.
-------------------------------------------
Update: Below is the response from Union County Republican Chairman Phil Morin.
"Tonight, the Union County Democratic machine had an opportunity to fill a disgraced former assemblyman's seat with a fresh face of change. Instead, party insiders have selected someone who represents more of the same. Instead of choosing someone who will change the culture of corruption in Trenton, they have chosen someone who is inextricably linked with the failed policies of the Corzine and McGreevey administrations. Undoubtedly, the newest member of the Trenton aristocracy will be a loyal footsoldier who will blindly vote for higher property taxes, bigger government and sweetheart deals for connected insiders.
It is hard to believe that someone who has served as legal counsel for Governor Corzine and undoubtedly advised him on initiatives such as the ill-fated toll tax plan to the latest COAH tax legislative disaster will be any different than her predecessor, who was more concerned with sparing a vicious dog's life than reducing the financial pressures on the overtaxed citizens of the 20th District.
Address :
Comments
Lesniak? DeFillippo? Cryan?
posted by Mr. Democrat
Was Quijano the candidate of Lesniak? I hadn't seen that reported anywhere.
Very close race. Makes it seem like the Bosses aren't in solid control (unless they just didn't have a preference between the two).
08/19/08 8:46 pm
------------------------------------------------
Phil Morin -A stand up guy offers good insights and interesting
posted by KathyCallahan
analysis of the -same old same old unispired and entirely predictable machine.
08/20/08 7:44 am
----------------------------------------------
They are in control, the bosses
posted by bitaryo
Remember the meeting was closed to the press and the public. What is reported is stage managed.
Still can't figure out why it is a Latino district with only a 24% share of the population.
08/20/08 7:52 am
Address :
Muhlenberg - Westfield Leader - Closing hikes UC unemployment
Westfield Leader, 8/13/2008
Muhlenberg Closing Adds
To Unemployment Hike in Union County
By CHRISTINA M. HINKE
Specially Written for The Westfield Leader
AREA – As of August 6, 300 Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center employees did not have jobs. This comes at a time when Union County’s unemployment rate rose to 5.6 percent in June (latest available), 1.1 percent higher than the average rate for 2007. Comparing it to the national and state average for June, Union County has slightly more out-of-work employees.
Tom Casey, vice president of public relations for Solaris Health Systems, said to The Westfield Leader July 31, “We found positions for roughly 650 employees mainly at JFK Medical.” Some, he said, have taken jobs at Solaris’ nursing facilities and other health service centers in Middlesex County.
He said 450 employees had resigned prior to the letter Nancy Fiamingo, senior vice president and chief operating officer for Muhlenberg, submitted to workers July 29, notifying them of the date the hospital would close. Of those who resigned, some took jobs at Trinitas Hospital in Elizabeth as mental health and psychology professionals, some went on to jobs elsewhere, and some retired. John Oatis, Fanwood volunteer rescue squad president, told The Leader that most of the doctors have moved from Muhlenberg.
Last Thursday, approximately 15 patients remained at Muhlenberg, and the hospital planned to move them the following day, according to Barbara Germinder, a volunteer at the medical center. Thursday was the last day for all volunteers. She said she did not have another volunteer post lined up yet but planned to find a position after the end of the year, once the holidays pass. The hospital halls were virtually empty, no one was sitting in the waiting room on the third floor, and three nurses manned the nursing station on the third floor last Thursday afternoon.
Most employees of the Plainfield medical center come from Union, Somerset and Middlesex counties, according to Mr. Casey. He did not have information about the number of displaced employees from each town or city. Of the people unemployed due to the closing of Muhlenberg are a mix of professional staff, including secretaries, clerks, clinical staff and service workers, such as food service and housekeeping. About five employees of Muhlenberg were asked to comment, last Thursday, on their career plan once the hospital closes, but no one wished to talk to the press. Administration declined to speak to the press as well.
A severance package was offered to those who did not take a job in the Solaris health system. Mr. Casey would not disclose specific details of the package but said the severance is in correlation with their position’s rate of pay and length of service to Muhlenberg. In compliance with state law, employees and their eligible dependents are entitled to receive medical coverage through COBRA, paid by the beneficiary. Mr. Casey did not have cost information. According to the state’s Division of Pension and Benefits website, the COBRA monthly payment is the “full group rate plus a 2 percent administration fee.”
Of the 650 people who stayed with Solaris, 200 to 250 employees will be on-site at Muhlenberg’s satellite emergency department to provide services. Diagnostic imaging, lab employees, dialysis, home care and medical records are also on the premises. The school of nursing adjacent to the hospital is unchanged at 300-plus students per year, according to Mr. Casey. The students will continue to attend classroom lectures and rotate through other acute-care facilities, including JFK and Overlook hospitals.
Muhlenberg Closing Adds
To Unemployment Hike in Union County
By CHRISTINA M. HINKE
Specially Written for The Westfield Leader
AREA – As of August 6, 300 Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center employees did not have jobs. This comes at a time when Union County’s unemployment rate rose to 5.6 percent in June (latest available), 1.1 percent higher than the average rate for 2007. Comparing it to the national and state average for June, Union County has slightly more out-of-work employees.
Tom Casey, vice president of public relations for Solaris Health Systems, said to The Westfield Leader July 31, “We found positions for roughly 650 employees mainly at JFK Medical.” Some, he said, have taken jobs at Solaris’ nursing facilities and other health service centers in Middlesex County.
He said 450 employees had resigned prior to the letter Nancy Fiamingo, senior vice president and chief operating officer for Muhlenberg, submitted to workers July 29, notifying them of the date the hospital would close. Of those who resigned, some took jobs at Trinitas Hospital in Elizabeth as mental health and psychology professionals, some went on to jobs elsewhere, and some retired. John Oatis, Fanwood volunteer rescue squad president, told The Leader that most of the doctors have moved from Muhlenberg.
Last Thursday, approximately 15 patients remained at Muhlenberg, and the hospital planned to move them the following day, according to Barbara Germinder, a volunteer at the medical center. Thursday was the last day for all volunteers. She said she did not have another volunteer post lined up yet but planned to find a position after the end of the year, once the holidays pass. The hospital halls were virtually empty, no one was sitting in the waiting room on the third floor, and three nurses manned the nursing station on the third floor last Thursday afternoon.
Most employees of the Plainfield medical center come from Union, Somerset and Middlesex counties, according to Mr. Casey. He did not have information about the number of displaced employees from each town or city. Of the people unemployed due to the closing of Muhlenberg are a mix of professional staff, including secretaries, clerks, clinical staff and service workers, such as food service and housekeeping. About five employees of Muhlenberg were asked to comment, last Thursday, on their career plan once the hospital closes, but no one wished to talk to the press. Administration declined to speak to the press as well.
A severance package was offered to those who did not take a job in the Solaris health system. Mr. Casey would not disclose specific details of the package but said the severance is in correlation with their position’s rate of pay and length of service to Muhlenberg. In compliance with state law, employees and their eligible dependents are entitled to receive medical coverage through COBRA, paid by the beneficiary. Mr. Casey did not have cost information. According to the state’s Division of Pension and Benefits website, the COBRA monthly payment is the “full group rate plus a 2 percent administration fee.”
Of the 650 people who stayed with Solaris, 200 to 250 employees will be on-site at Muhlenberg’s satellite emergency department to provide services. Diagnostic imaging, lab employees, dialysis, home care and medical records are also on the premises. The school of nursing adjacent to the hospital is unchanged at 300-plus students per year, according to Mr. Casey. The students will continue to attend classroom lectures and rotate through other acute-care facilities, including JFK and Overlook hospitals.
NJ Media - NY Observer - Ledger, Record, Gannett Woes
Published in the New York Observer, Wednesday, August 12, 2008
Welcome to New Jersey, Media Wasteland
What if a big juicy scandal happens
and there’s no one to cover it?
by John Koblin | August 12, 2008
This article was published in the August 18, 2008, edition of The New York Observer.
Is New Jersey really that uninteresting?
Since the start of summer, The New York Times emptied out its two New Jersey bureaus in Trenton and Newark; in June, The Record of Bergen County announced it would shut down its headquarters and its reporters would be homeless; in July, The Star Ledger announced that it was cutting about a third of its newsroom, and its owners said they would consider selling the paper.
It’s becoming reasonable to wonder if, at this rate, there will be anyone left to cover the state soon.
“Can you cover the big stories that really mean something to people—how taxes are spent, projections for jobs, stuff you just need to know if you live here—if you have too few journalists?” said Frank Scandale, the editor of The Record. “That’s a concern I have now as a journalist and as a citizen of New Jersey.”
As usual, it all comes down to money. The Record’s publisher said it would save $2.4 million per year by shutting down its Hackensack home; Donald Newhouse, president of Advance Publications, which owns The Ledger, said the paper is losing $30 million to $40 million and needs to cut 200 jobs in order to stay afloat; The Times eliminated its bureaus amid larger job cuts.
So what caused the problems?
“The Ledger has been very badly hit by the real estate downturn,” said Mr. Newhouse in a phone interview with Off the Record. “New Jersey was a very strong real estate economy, but it soured. It is much more serious in New Jersey than in any of the other markets that we are publishing in.”
But even if the housing market is crashing, that’s cyclical. Those things don’t last. Newsday, the Long Island daily newspaper, is battered by the same things that are affecting Jersey papers, and yet it makes money—last year it had an operating cash flow of $88 million, according to its publisher, and it sold for $650 million in July.
Like Newsday, The Ledger caters, in theory, to a populous, affluent market rich in potential advertisers.
And yet it would be a stretch to imagine that The Ledger could be sold for anything like that number, since it loses so much money. (Mr. Newhouse declined to discuss precise financials.)
One reason The Ledger, or The Record for that matter, could never be the Newsday of New Jersey is simply that there’s competition.
“Those papers aren’t surrounded by water, which, believe me, helps Newsday a lot,” said John Morton, a newspaper-industry analyst. “It sort of insulates the Long Island market and Newsday owns Long Island. New Jersey, in the overall market, is one of the most highly competitive markets in the country. If you look at a map and see how many daily newspapers are in that part of New Jersey, it’s astounding.”
There are 18 daily newspapers in the state that are members of the New Jersey Publishers Association, a trade organization. A retrenchment, in retrospect, was only a matter of time.
It’s been grim.
“It almost happened overnight,” said State Senate President, former governor, and all-around Jersey cheerleader Richard Codey.
The smaller papers haven’t fared much better than the big ones. Gannett, whose stock price recently hit an 18-year-low, eliminated 55 jobs this year at four of its six Jersey papers including the Asbury Park Press, the Home News Tribune in East Brunswick, the Courier News in Bridgewater and the Daily Record in Parsippany. This came just weeks after it extracted 83 buyouts from the Press, the Home News Tribune, the Courier News, the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill and the Daily Journal in Vineland. The Record’s sister paper, the Herald News, recently collapsed its sports department into the Record’s since it wasn’t sustainable to run both independently. The Ledger’s sister paper, the Trenton Times, is absorbing 25 buyouts.
But Mr. Codey seemed particularly shocked at the rapid dissolution of The Times’ presence on the other side of the river.
Shortly after The Times announced it would cut 100 jobs earlier this year, the paper began to unroll plans to remove reporters from its Newark and Trenton bureaus. Ever since The Times eliminated most of the original content for its Sunday New Jersey section two years ago in favor of consolidated material shared by all its regional supplements, its presence in the state has been dropping. Now, it’s pretty much all gone.
“Fortunately, when I was governor, The Times did really good stuff,” said Mr. Codey. “I miss it. Now I go to the metro section and when I see a Jersey story, I go, ‘Whoa! This is unbelievable—a story!’”
In a July Q&A with Times metro editor Joe Sexton, a reader asked why the paper had abandoned the state. Mr. Sexton wrote: “Dude, ouch! But Jersey? Love Jersey.”
He said that The Times was leaving behind David Kocieniewski, an accomplished reporter who is well regarded by the masthead. He added that The Times was indeed planning to “concentrate more on New York City,” but pledged that the paper would continue to send reporters to Jersey to cover “major news” and trends on the regular metro beats. Also: Peter Applebome’s twice-weekly “Our Towns” column.
But the numbers speak for themselves. The dozen or so reporters and editors that The Times had covering the state two years ago are gone, farmed out to cover areas still of interest to the paper. David Chen, the former Trenton bureau chief, is the New York City Hall bureau chief; Andrew Jacobs, who covered Cory Booker in Newark, is now in Beijing; Newark reporter and published poet Tina Kelley is, according to an internal memo sent out by Mr. Sexton, “spending more and more of her reporting life online, busting rhymes here and there along the way.”
The cost-saving measures that The Times has taken in Jersey, however, aren’t much more dramatic than what The Record has done. In order to stay afloat, the Hackensack-based daily is actually shutting down its offices and sending reporters onto the streets.
“We have two counties we focus on—primarily Bergen and Passaic—so our reporters will be in these counties and they’ll be running around with their cell phone, a laptop, a camera, and he’ll be writing a story in the lobby of a building and he can shoot and file a picture,” said Mr. Scandale, the editor of the paper.
The Record will keep a small office in West Paterson, but Mr. Scandale said the vast majority of its reporters wouldn’t have office space there, and only some editors would have some.
“People will be coming in and out all day long,” he said. “They can touch base, or not come in for three or four days because there’s no need to.”
Job cuts notwithstanding, The Ledger, under the leadership of Jim Willse, is acting with relative restraint.
It has always been regarded as a good-paying place to work—interns are paid $700 a week, according to one source—and Mr. Willse raised the salaries company-wide. In addition, The Ledger still generates stories out of fully formed suburban bureaus. As a result, it is a good editorial product, but it is expensive to produce.
That, with the combination of the loss in real estate advertising, seems to have taken its toll on the paper.
“It is a perfect storm of economic problems,” said Mr. Newhouse. “It is a very bad year, there’s no question about it. I don’t think there were any forecasts that would predict how serious the downturn would be.”
The Ledger will do it the old-fashioned way: job cuts. The paper will cut 200 non-unionized employees, and one newsroom source anticipates that will mean about 100 newsroom jobs—a little less than a third of the newsroom’s body count of roughly 350. In the course of announcing the cuts, Advance Publications said in a memo that if the cuts couldn’t be achieved, they would consider selling the paper. (Observer publisher Jared Kushner was cited in news reports as a potential buyer.)
Mr. Scandale is confident that The Record will remain a good paper, even without a newsroom. But when asked what the general decline means for the state, and if things will actually get far worse than they are right now, he didn’t offer much.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It remains to be seen.”
jkoblin@observer.com.
Online story here. Archived here.
(Note: Online stories may be taken down by their publisher after a period of time or made available for a fee. Links posted here is from the original online publication of this piece.)
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
Welcome to New Jersey, Media Wasteland
What if a big juicy scandal happens
and there’s no one to cover it?
by John Koblin | August 12, 2008
This article was published in the August 18, 2008, edition of The New York Observer.
Is New Jersey really that uninteresting?
Since the start of summer, The New York Times emptied out its two New Jersey bureaus in Trenton and Newark; in June, The Record of Bergen County announced it would shut down its headquarters and its reporters would be homeless; in July, The Star Ledger announced that it was cutting about a third of its newsroom, and its owners said they would consider selling the paper.
It’s becoming reasonable to wonder if, at this rate, there will be anyone left to cover the state soon.
“Can you cover the big stories that really mean something to people—how taxes are spent, projections for jobs, stuff you just need to know if you live here—if you have too few journalists?” said Frank Scandale, the editor of The Record. “That’s a concern I have now as a journalist and as a citizen of New Jersey.”
As usual, it all comes down to money. The Record’s publisher said it would save $2.4 million per year by shutting down its Hackensack home; Donald Newhouse, president of Advance Publications, which owns The Ledger, said the paper is losing $30 million to $40 million and needs to cut 200 jobs in order to stay afloat; The Times eliminated its bureaus amid larger job cuts.
So what caused the problems?
“The Ledger has been very badly hit by the real estate downturn,” said Mr. Newhouse in a phone interview with Off the Record. “New Jersey was a very strong real estate economy, but it soured. It is much more serious in New Jersey than in any of the other markets that we are publishing in.”
But even if the housing market is crashing, that’s cyclical. Those things don’t last. Newsday, the Long Island daily newspaper, is battered by the same things that are affecting Jersey papers, and yet it makes money—last year it had an operating cash flow of $88 million, according to its publisher, and it sold for $650 million in July.
Like Newsday, The Ledger caters, in theory, to a populous, affluent market rich in potential advertisers.
And yet it would be a stretch to imagine that The Ledger could be sold for anything like that number, since it loses so much money. (Mr. Newhouse declined to discuss precise financials.)
One reason The Ledger, or The Record for that matter, could never be the Newsday of New Jersey is simply that there’s competition.
“Those papers aren’t surrounded by water, which, believe me, helps Newsday a lot,” said John Morton, a newspaper-industry analyst. “It sort of insulates the Long Island market and Newsday owns Long Island. New Jersey, in the overall market, is one of the most highly competitive markets in the country. If you look at a map and see how many daily newspapers are in that part of New Jersey, it’s astounding.”
There are 18 daily newspapers in the state that are members of the New Jersey Publishers Association, a trade organization. A retrenchment, in retrospect, was only a matter of time.
It’s been grim.
“It almost happened overnight,” said State Senate President, former governor, and all-around Jersey cheerleader Richard Codey.
The smaller papers haven’t fared much better than the big ones. Gannett, whose stock price recently hit an 18-year-low, eliminated 55 jobs this year at four of its six Jersey papers including the Asbury Park Press, the Home News Tribune in East Brunswick, the Courier News in Bridgewater and the Daily Record in Parsippany. This came just weeks after it extracted 83 buyouts from the Press, the Home News Tribune, the Courier News, the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill and the Daily Journal in Vineland. The Record’s sister paper, the Herald News, recently collapsed its sports department into the Record’s since it wasn’t sustainable to run both independently. The Ledger’s sister paper, the Trenton Times, is absorbing 25 buyouts.
But Mr. Codey seemed particularly shocked at the rapid dissolution of The Times’ presence on the other side of the river.
Shortly after The Times announced it would cut 100 jobs earlier this year, the paper began to unroll plans to remove reporters from its Newark and Trenton bureaus. Ever since The Times eliminated most of the original content for its Sunday New Jersey section two years ago in favor of consolidated material shared by all its regional supplements, its presence in the state has been dropping. Now, it’s pretty much all gone.
“Fortunately, when I was governor, The Times did really good stuff,” said Mr. Codey. “I miss it. Now I go to the metro section and when I see a Jersey story, I go, ‘Whoa! This is unbelievable—a story!’”
In a July Q&A with Times metro editor Joe Sexton, a reader asked why the paper had abandoned the state. Mr. Sexton wrote: “Dude, ouch! But Jersey? Love Jersey.”
He said that The Times was leaving behind David Kocieniewski, an accomplished reporter who is well regarded by the masthead. He added that The Times was indeed planning to “concentrate more on New York City,” but pledged that the paper would continue to send reporters to Jersey to cover “major news” and trends on the regular metro beats. Also: Peter Applebome’s twice-weekly “Our Towns” column.
But the numbers speak for themselves. The dozen or so reporters and editors that The Times had covering the state two years ago are gone, farmed out to cover areas still of interest to the paper. David Chen, the former Trenton bureau chief, is the New York City Hall bureau chief; Andrew Jacobs, who covered Cory Booker in Newark, is now in Beijing; Newark reporter and published poet Tina Kelley is, according to an internal memo sent out by Mr. Sexton, “spending more and more of her reporting life online, busting rhymes here and there along the way.”
The cost-saving measures that The Times has taken in Jersey, however, aren’t much more dramatic than what The Record has done. In order to stay afloat, the Hackensack-based daily is actually shutting down its offices and sending reporters onto the streets.
“We have two counties we focus on—primarily Bergen and Passaic—so our reporters will be in these counties and they’ll be running around with their cell phone, a laptop, a camera, and he’ll be writing a story in the lobby of a building and he can shoot and file a picture,” said Mr. Scandale, the editor of the paper.
The Record will keep a small office in West Paterson, but Mr. Scandale said the vast majority of its reporters wouldn’t have office space there, and only some editors would have some.
“People will be coming in and out all day long,” he said. “They can touch base, or not come in for three or four days because there’s no need to.”
Job cuts notwithstanding, The Ledger, under the leadership of Jim Willse, is acting with relative restraint.
It has always been regarded as a good-paying place to work—interns are paid $700 a week, according to one source—and Mr. Willse raised the salaries company-wide. In addition, The Ledger still generates stories out of fully formed suburban bureaus. As a result, it is a good editorial product, but it is expensive to produce.
That, with the combination of the loss in real estate advertising, seems to have taken its toll on the paper.
“It is a perfect storm of economic problems,” said Mr. Newhouse. “It is a very bad year, there’s no question about it. I don’t think there were any forecasts that would predict how serious the downturn would be.”
The Ledger will do it the old-fashioned way: job cuts. The paper will cut 200 non-unionized employees, and one newsroom source anticipates that will mean about 100 newsroom jobs—a little less than a third of the newsroom’s body count of roughly 350. In the course of announcing the cuts, Advance Publications said in a memo that if the cuts couldn’t be achieved, they would consider selling the paper. (Observer publisher Jared Kushner was cited in news reports as a potential buyer.)
Mr. Scandale is confident that The Record will remain a good paper, even without a newsroom. But when asked what the general decline means for the state, and if things will actually get far worse than they are right now, he didn’t offer much.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It remains to be seen.”
jkoblin@observer.com.
Online story here. Archived here.
(Note: Online stories may be taken down by their publisher after a period of time or made available for a fee. Links posted here is from the original online publication of this piece.)
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
Street cams - McClatchy - Catch speeders and raise cash
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/v-print/story/47592.html
McClatchy Washington Bureau
Posted on Mon, Aug. 11, 2008
Cop cameras don't just catch speeders, they raise cash
Frank Greve | McClatchy Newspaper
last updated: August 12, 2008 08:32:34 AM
WASHINGTON — The leafy capital suburb of Chevy Chase Village is a great place to live but you wouldn't want to visit there.
At least not by car. Easy-to-miss automated speed cameras on its half-mile main drag, where the speed limit is 30 mph, caught 3,500 speeders on their first day of operation last fall. Before that, the norm was six tickets a day.
Many speeders first learn they've been caught when citations, along with photographic evidence, show up at the addresses that match the violators' license plates.
Be forewarned: More than 300 U.S. communities use automated "cop cam" systems like Chevy Chase's. They're after not just speeders but also red-light violators and railroad-crossing jumpers.
In the works are bus-mounted cop cams that ticket bus lane intruders, cop cams to punish speeders in highway construction zones, even cop cam systems that ticket motorists based on a car's average speed over a mile. They catch drivers who brake for known camera sites, then resume speeding.
Want to fight a cop cam ticket?
The same software that processes violations lets drivers view the five seconds before and after their alleged offenses on their home computers.
"It's very compelling evidence," said Cristina Weekes, the executive vice president for sales and marketing at Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., of Scottsdale, Ariz., a leading cop-cam maker.
"It's almost a no-win," admitted Horace Bradshaw, Washington's best-known traffic court defense lawyer.
When polled, substantial majorities approve of cop cams. When ticketed, however, lots are outraged.
"It's like Nazi Germany!" sputtered Dan Bradley, 41, a federal personnel investigator who routinely runs the six-lane Chevy Chase gantlet. "They ticket you for speeds that aren't dangerous."
In the peaceable United Kingdom, where cop cams are 10 times more widely used, saboteurs have shot out cameras lenses, disabled them with bolt cutters, set fire to them and pulled them down with a tractor's help, according to news reports.
What bugs people is clear from an industry pioneer's explanation of the effectiveness of cop cams:
"It's like the prospect of an IRS audit: The perception of risk promotes voluntary compliance," said Jim Tuton, founder of American Traffic Solutions of Scottsdale, Weekes' rival.
Three more tangible advantages excite municipal officials:
- Cop cams suppress violations effectively by all accounts, at least around known camera sites. In one widely cited study, six speed cameras posted on an eight-mile stretch of the Loop 101 freeway in Scottsdale cut speeders by 88 percent over a nine-month period.
- Cop cams reduce accidents, by most accounts. The frequent exception is more rear-enders, due to sudden stops on yellow at intersections where drivers know that the light is camera-monitored. Reductions in more hazardous right-angle crashes more than offset the added rear-enders, police say.
- The third reason, which municipal officials downplay, is that cop cams can be cash cows.
For a community of 2,000 with an annual budget of $4.6 million, that's a bonanza. What's more, because locals know enough to evade the cop cams, the village's new revenue mostly comes from outsiders, rather like a commuter tax.
Nor are Chevy Chase's big gains unique. Washington's dozen cop cams have taken in more than $200 million since 2001. Scottsdale's six freeway cameras took in $17 million in 2006.
Chevy Chase Police Chief Roy Gordon said in an interview, however: "It's not about how much revenue we're taking in with these cameras; it's about changing driver behavior."
There are four ways to avoid cop cam tickets: Most communities warn motorists that traffic laws are photo-enforced. New York City is one exception. Most municipalities also list cop-cam locations on their Web sites. Some new navigation systems warn drivers of known cop cam locations. And there's a site that tries to keep track of them, www.photoenforced.com.
Municipalities and contractors both do well by doing good, but contractors do more of the work.
The contractor studies a community's violation patterns, recommends camera locations, and calibrates and maintains the cameras. Using the police department's definition of speeding — typically 10 or 11 miles above the posted speed except in school zones — the cop cam system saves only the images of likely violators. Police review these along with the proposed citations.
Reviewers toss those with flaws, such as blurred license-plate numbers, more than one car in a single radar photo image or, in many jurisdictions, rental cars, whose drivers are too hard to track down. Contractors ticket the remainder and track collections.
Revenue splits vary, depending on the amounts of fines and traffic.
In Kingsport, Tenn., for example, Redflex receives 80 percent of the ticket price ($40) for the first 95 tickets issued at each intersection approach each month. Kingsport gets the remaining $10, according to Deputy Police Chief David Quillin.
After 95 tickets, Redflex and Kingsport split the fines evenly. In addition, Kingsport gets court costs, which the city council hiked from $13.50 to $50 last year. (The increase "would have happened regardless of the cameras," Quillin said. )
For the city, the gain is from $160,000 a year pre-cameras to an estimated $1.4 million. Redflex will make about half that.
Currently, 27 states — including California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Mississippi, North Carolina, Texas and Washington — permit some kind of cop cam system. Arizona bought 100 speed and HOV-lane cameras this year for state highways. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants hundreds more.
Their only natural enemies are proving to be state legislatures. Many are so keen for a big share of cop cam revenue that local governments lose the incentive to introduce the cameras.
Nonetheless, cop cam maker Tuton predicts that the cameras someday will be part of the "standard national infrastructure."
The big reason is that their spread is viral: When they work, violations and revenue both fall. To that, the likeliest answer is more cameras.
On the Web:
An assessment of safety improvements attributable to red light cop-cams
Cop-cam makers:
The best anti-cop-cam site:
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Muhlenberg - Westfield Leader - Colvins' letter on finances
Westfield Leader, August 7, 2008
Letter of Revs. Jim and Sarah Colvin
Taxpayers Pay for Questionable
Hospital Closings in New Jersey
Thanks for your coverage of Muhlenberg.
The only entities who benefit from the closing of a hospital are the large corporations that close them. Gov. Jon Corzine must be pleased that his friends at the top of the economic food chain benefit so handsomely. Catholic Health East of Pa. will receive $252 million in low cost bonds issued by the state as it takes over St. Michel’s in Newark, and the issuer may well be Corzine’s alma mater, Goldman Sachs. (Goldman Sachs is listed as a possible issuer in the NJ Hospitals and Facilities Authority bulletin). For the first six years, we taxpayers will shell out $8.8 million per year, then theoretically the company will take over payments, although we remain on the hook for the duration.
Solaris Health Systems, who declared Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center insolvent and convinced Corzine and his Health Commissioner, Heather Howard, to close this essential urban hospital, will benefit greatly from the closing. At first, Solaris applied for $70 million to close Muhlenberg. Now the number has magically increased to $160 million — an astonishing figure that could be used to maintain the hospital for another ten years! We taxpayers have a right to see just what the $160 million is intended to do.
Instead, Solaris is trying to cash in at the expense of state taxpayers and at the same time selling off as much of the property as possible. (It is valued at over $90 million.) Solaris must be drooling in wait of the day when they can shut down all operations in Plainfield and cash in to support bloated executive salaries. CEO John McGee makes $652,000 on the books and who knows how much from his other business dealings partnering with local politicians.
Corzine should be held accountable for these amoral shenanigans that end up endangering people by depriving them of healthcare. Not surprisingly, most of them are located in poor urban areas with large minority populations.
We pray for the day when Corzine holds no public office and Solaris is out of the healthcare business — and for the day when healthcare is seen as a human right rather than a source of profit for the few.
Revs. James and Sarah Colvin
United Church of Christ, Plainfield
Letter of Revs. Jim and Sarah Colvin
Taxpayers Pay for Questionable
Hospital Closings in New Jersey
Thanks for your coverage of Muhlenberg.
The only entities who benefit from the closing of a hospital are the large corporations that close them. Gov. Jon Corzine must be pleased that his friends at the top of the economic food chain benefit so handsomely. Catholic Health East of Pa. will receive $252 million in low cost bonds issued by the state as it takes over St. Michel’s in Newark, and the issuer may well be Corzine’s alma mater, Goldman Sachs. (Goldman Sachs is listed as a possible issuer in the NJ Hospitals and Facilities Authority bulletin). For the first six years, we taxpayers will shell out $8.8 million per year, then theoretically the company will take over payments, although we remain on the hook for the duration.
Solaris Health Systems, who declared Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center insolvent and convinced Corzine and his Health Commissioner, Heather Howard, to close this essential urban hospital, will benefit greatly from the closing. At first, Solaris applied for $70 million to close Muhlenberg. Now the number has magically increased to $160 million — an astonishing figure that could be used to maintain the hospital for another ten years! We taxpayers have a right to see just what the $160 million is intended to do.
Instead, Solaris is trying to cash in at the expense of state taxpayers and at the same time selling off as much of the property as possible. (It is valued at over $90 million.) Solaris must be drooling in wait of the day when they can shut down all operations in Plainfield and cash in to support bloated executive salaries. CEO John McGee makes $652,000 on the books and who knows how much from his other business dealings partnering with local politicians.
Corzine should be held accountable for these amoral shenanigans that end up endangering people by depriving them of healthcare. Not surprisingly, most of them are located in poor urban areas with large minority populations.
We pray for the day when Corzine holds no public office and Solaris is out of the healthcare business — and for the day when healthcare is seen as a human right rather than a source of profit for the few.
Revs. James and Sarah Colvin
United Church of Christ, Plainfield
Monday, August 04, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Christie - Westfield Leader - Union County pols need to worry
Published in the Westfield Leader, June 26, 2008
[Christie wants to hear about Union County misconduct]
He's Going to Jail July 29, Christie Says of Sharpe James
By HORACE CORBIN
Specially written for the Westfield Leader
WESTFIELD -- U.S. Attorney Chris Christie said, "He's going to jail, July 29" referring to the sentencing of former Newark Mayor, and State Senator, Sharpe James, in an interview last Thursday with publisher, Horace Corbin, of The Westfield Leader and The Scotch Plains-Fanwood Times.
"We're asking for ten to 15-year sentencing from Judge [William] Martini who presides over the case," Mr. Christie said. "That sends a message to all other politicians in New Jersey who think they are untouchable." Unlike in state prison, federal prison inmates are not eligible for parole. 72-year-old James would likely be spending most, if not all, of the remainder of his life in jail. When asked about James' two Silver Cloud Rolls Royce's, yacht andshore estate, and if the taxpayers will ever see any of their money back, Mr. Christie said, "Unlikely. What we've convicted him of is relatively small in the context of what you're talking about."
The 40-minute interview with Mr. Christie can be viewed at goleader.com/video.
For seven years, Mr. Christie has served as U.S. Attorney with his office located in Newark and branches in Trenton and Camden. He said even his mother confuses his job with that of state Attorney General (AG). The U.S. Attorney is appointed by the President of the United States, confirmed by the Senate and is responsible for enforcing federal laws.
The AG is appointed by the Governor of New Jersey and is responsible for enforcing state laws. Mr. Christie said he has a close relationship with recently appointed AG Anne Milgram. They confer once a week. He said she is a true professional and clearly understands the basis of prosecution. They often work together, as exemplified by the James conviction. He publicly admitted to not always having a good relationship with the AG's office, so referring to those formerly in the position, Peter Harvey and Zulima Farber. Mr. Christie said his opinion changed when Stuart Rabner was appointed as AG for one year, and now is Supreme Court chief justice. Mr. Rabner had worked for Mr. Christie in the U.S. Attorney's office.
With a 128-0 record of convicting corrupt public officials, Mr. Christie said he is proud of the accomplishments of his office. When asked why he did not press for more convictions, Mr. Christie said his office prepares a case and when they are absolutely sure they can get a conviction, they present the case to a jury. "An indictment damages a person's reputation, so we want to be sure beyond a reasonable doubt," he said.
Mr. Christie said his office pursues cases regardless of political affiliation, a tactic that helps him to avoid the reputation former governor Eliot Spitzer developed as attorney general in New York, with his aggressive style. Mr. Christie said he does not believe the state has turned the corner yet on the culture of corruption; however, the issue is foremost on many minds.
"Invariable," he said. "We're not going to prosecute our way out of corruption. Given 566 municipalities, 611 school districts, 21 counties and a $35-billion state budget, 128 convictions is a small number. "Still, we've shined a very, very bright light on the problem, and now there is enormous discussion of this at every corner. Six to seven years ago, that was not the case."
About the message getting down to all other levels and special interests, he said, "I really do [think so], but that doesn't mean, I'm not claiming we've changed behavior across the board." He added the U.S. Attorney's office has a "zero tolerance" policy. It takes two to three years to investigate a case and obtain a conviction. With his term coming to an end in a few months, he said we have a `very active' pipeline.
"Anyone who's breaking the law in Union County has to be nervous and beyond that, I will not be making any comment about any particular individuals," Mr. Christie said. Aside from political corruption, his office handles several other matters, such as drugs and organized crime.
One area of particular concern to him is human trafficking what he said is a "terrific tragedy." His office has prosecuted more such crimes than any other office in the country. He said due to New Jersey's diverse culture; criminals from Mexico, Central America, Eastern Europe, Russia and Asia could find a community in the state where they would not be conspicuous in contrast, say to Oklahoma. His office put two women in Federal prison for the next 17 years for the sex enslavement in Plainfield, of four teenage girls from Mexico.
However, his stance on immigration is somewhat different. "Being without proper documentation is not a crime," Mr. Christie said, pointing out the legal difference between illegal immigration and improper documentation. "I don't make the law, I just enforce it." He said someone could have an expired visa and that is not something a person can be arrested for in this country although they could be deported. However, entering the United States illegally and/or having false documents are a crime and one would be subject to arrest.
On criticism he received was from The New York Times over the hiring of John Ashcroft to oversee compliance of five companies that had been paying kickbacks to doctors; Mr. Christie responded that although Mr. Ashcroft may be a controversial, national figure, no one claimed he was unqualified for the job.
He said these five companies, which manufacture artificial hips and knees, have 95 percent of the market. Mr. Christie said the companies were illegally paying doctors to use only their products. He said this practice has been halted, and $511 million have been recovered to Medicare. Medicare pays for two-thirds of hip replacements in the country. He said several doctors involved in this situation are in his "pipeline," and are soon to come out, which he would not comment on at this time. Mr. Christie said he can't comment on his plans after the November Presidential election, and must focus on the duties of his office.
Asked if Presidential candidates Barack Obama or John McCain requested him to stay on, he quipped that it is unlikely that Mr. Obama would give him a call. Regarding Mr. McCain, he said it would be very difficult to turn down a request from a President, but he could only imagine the conversation that this would generate with his wife.
He advised the press to be diligent, and urged citizens to attend meetings, protest against faulty government and campaign against elected officials that break their promises. "Throw them out," he said.
Further, he said he knows it is possible for citizens in any town in to have a direct impact. When he lived in Westfield early in his marriage, he said he witnessed door-to-door citizen campaigns.
He asked anyone with a complaint of government or suspecting wrong-doing to call him in Newark at (973) 645-2700; or if they prefer, call the FBI in Newark at (973) 792-3000. He said he has e-mail but prefers to talk to people directly. He said they need not be concerned and he doesn't record his phone calls. "I'm here to serve you, the public."
He said he's "incredibly flattered" to be mentioned as a candidate for Governor next year, but said it is presumptuous for him to even consider it at this time.
Mr. Christie was born in Newark and raised in Livingston where he became friends with Senator Tom Kean, Jr., now of Westfield. Mr. Christie lives with his family today in Mendham.
Next year, for the first time in history, New Jersey will also choose a Lieutenant Governor. Mr. Corbin posed, "Could it be 'Christie and Kean, Perfect Together'?"
"LINK" to online story.
(Note: Online stories may be taken down by their publisher after a period of time or made available for a fee. Links posted here is from the original online publication of this piece.)
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
[Christie wants to hear about Union County misconduct]
He's Going to Jail July 29, Christie Says of Sharpe James
By HORACE CORBIN
Specially written for the Westfield Leader
WESTFIELD -- U.S. Attorney Chris Christie said, "He's going to jail, July 29" referring to the sentencing of former Newark Mayor, and State Senator, Sharpe James, in an interview last Thursday with publisher, Horace Corbin, of The Westfield Leader and The Scotch Plains-Fanwood Times.
"We're asking for ten to 15-year sentencing from Judge [William] Martini who presides over the case," Mr. Christie said. "That sends a message to all other politicians in New Jersey who think they are untouchable." Unlike in state prison, federal prison inmates are not eligible for parole. 72-year-old James would likely be spending most, if not all, of the remainder of his life in jail. When asked about James' two Silver Cloud Rolls Royce's, yacht andshore estate, and if the taxpayers will ever see any of their money back, Mr. Christie said, "Unlikely. What we've convicted him of is relatively small in the context of what you're talking about."
The 40-minute interview with Mr. Christie can be viewed at goleader.com/video.
For seven years, Mr. Christie has served as U.S. Attorney with his office located in Newark and branches in Trenton and Camden. He said even his mother confuses his job with that of state Attorney General (AG). The U.S. Attorney is appointed by the President of the United States, confirmed by the Senate and is responsible for enforcing federal laws.
The AG is appointed by the Governor of New Jersey and is responsible for enforcing state laws. Mr. Christie said he has a close relationship with recently appointed AG Anne Milgram. They confer once a week. He said she is a true professional and clearly understands the basis of prosecution. They often work together, as exemplified by the James conviction. He publicly admitted to not always having a good relationship with the AG's office, so referring to those formerly in the position, Peter Harvey and Zulima Farber. Mr. Christie said his opinion changed when Stuart Rabner was appointed as AG for one year, and now is Supreme Court chief justice. Mr. Rabner had worked for Mr. Christie in the U.S. Attorney's office.
With a 128-0 record of convicting corrupt public officials, Mr. Christie said he is proud of the accomplishments of his office. When asked why he did not press for more convictions, Mr. Christie said his office prepares a case and when they are absolutely sure they can get a conviction, they present the case to a jury. "An indictment damages a person's reputation, so we want to be sure beyond a reasonable doubt," he said.
Mr. Christie said his office pursues cases regardless of political affiliation, a tactic that helps him to avoid the reputation former governor Eliot Spitzer developed as attorney general in New York, with his aggressive style. Mr. Christie said he does not believe the state has turned the corner yet on the culture of corruption; however, the issue is foremost on many minds.
"Invariable," he said. "We're not going to prosecute our way out of corruption. Given 566 municipalities, 611 school districts, 21 counties and a $35-billion state budget, 128 convictions is a small number. "Still, we've shined a very, very bright light on the problem, and now there is enormous discussion of this at every corner. Six to seven years ago, that was not the case."
About the message getting down to all other levels and special interests, he said, "I really do [think so], but that doesn't mean, I'm not claiming we've changed behavior across the board." He added the U.S. Attorney's office has a "zero tolerance" policy. It takes two to three years to investigate a case and obtain a conviction. With his term coming to an end in a few months, he said we have a `very active' pipeline.
"Anyone who's breaking the law in Union County has to be nervous and beyond that, I will not be making any comment about any particular individuals," Mr. Christie said. Aside from political corruption, his office handles several other matters, such as drugs and organized crime.
One area of particular concern to him is human trafficking what he said is a "terrific tragedy." His office has prosecuted more such crimes than any other office in the country. He said due to New Jersey's diverse culture; criminals from Mexico, Central America, Eastern Europe, Russia and Asia could find a community in the state where they would not be conspicuous in contrast, say to Oklahoma. His office put two women in Federal prison for the next 17 years for the sex enslavement in Plainfield, of four teenage girls from Mexico.
However, his stance on immigration is somewhat different. "Being without proper documentation is not a crime," Mr. Christie said, pointing out the legal difference between illegal immigration and improper documentation. "I don't make the law, I just enforce it." He said someone could have an expired visa and that is not something a person can be arrested for in this country although they could be deported. However, entering the United States illegally and/or having false documents are a crime and one would be subject to arrest.
On criticism he received was from The New York Times over the hiring of John Ashcroft to oversee compliance of five companies that had been paying kickbacks to doctors; Mr. Christie responded that although Mr. Ashcroft may be a controversial, national figure, no one claimed he was unqualified for the job.
He said these five companies, which manufacture artificial hips and knees, have 95 percent of the market. Mr. Christie said the companies were illegally paying doctors to use only their products. He said this practice has been halted, and $511 million have been recovered to Medicare. Medicare pays for two-thirds of hip replacements in the country. He said several doctors involved in this situation are in his "pipeline," and are soon to come out, which he would not comment on at this time. Mr. Christie said he can't comment on his plans after the November Presidential election, and must focus on the duties of his office.
Asked if Presidential candidates Barack Obama or John McCain requested him to stay on, he quipped that it is unlikely that Mr. Obama would give him a call. Regarding Mr. McCain, he said it would be very difficult to turn down a request from a President, but he could only imagine the conversation that this would generate with his wife.
He advised the press to be diligent, and urged citizens to attend meetings, protest against faulty government and campaign against elected officials that break their promises. "Throw them out," he said.
Further, he said he knows it is possible for citizens in any town in to have a direct impact. When he lived in Westfield early in his marriage, he said he witnessed door-to-door citizen campaigns.
He asked anyone with a complaint of government or suspecting wrong-doing to call him in Newark at (973) 645-2700; or if they prefer, call the FBI in Newark at (973) 792-3000. He said he has e-mail but prefers to talk to people directly. He said they need not be concerned and he doesn't record his phone calls. "I'm here to serve you, the public."
He said he's "incredibly flattered" to be mentioned as a candidate for Governor next year, but said it is presumptuous for him to even consider it at this time.
Mr. Christie was born in Newark and raised in Livingston where he became friends with Senator Tom Kean, Jr., now of Westfield. Mr. Christie lives with his family today in Mendham.
Next year, for the first time in history, New Jersey will also choose a Lieutenant Governor. Mr. Corbin posed, "Could it be 'Christie and Kean, Perfect Together'?"
"LINK" to online story.
(Note: Online stories may be taken down by their publisher after a period of time or made available for a fee. Links posted here is from the original online publication of this piece.)
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
Obama - PolitickerNJ - Obamaland in NJ (3 parts)
PolitickerNJ's Guide to Obamaland
PART 1.
June 30, 2008 - 5:00pm
A thumbnail New Jersey guide to the history of Obamaland, Part I
By Max Pizarro
NJ for Obama organizers Julie Diaz and Keith Hovey.NJ for Obama organizers Julie Diaz and Keith Hovey.
The Obama campaign started small here, with handfuls of coffee house organizers lining up behind a grassroots operation called NJ for Obama in the face of a big party machine backing Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), and an unpopular war in Iraq.
Founded in an Edison coffee shop in December of 2006, the group’s leader was Damian Bednarz, 25, a Master’s student in international relations with Seton Hall University’s Whitehead School of Diplomacy.
"Obama has something that Hillary Clinton can’t buy or reproduce, and that’s a sense of inspiration," Bednarz said at the time. "If anything, I’m encouraged by Clinton’s frontrunner status because I know our work is so special."
In the months following, some elected officials in the months endorsed the Illinois senator, among them Assemblyman Neil Cohen (D-Union), who came out in favor of Obama in April of 2007, followed by state Sen. John Adler (D-Camden) a couple of weeks later.
"At this time we need someone special... someone who is going to build a bridge brick by brick to peace through negotiation," said Cohen, a graduate of Howard University who arrived at politics through the Civil Rights era.
One common theme early was the appreciation that Obama’s supporters showed for their candidate’s opposition to the Iraq War - which differentiated him from Clinton, who in 2002 authorized President George W. Bush to send in troops.
"As Obama said, he’s not afraid of going into wars," said Cohen, "he’s afraid of going into dumb wars."
The sense at this point was that Obama was at best a longshot nationally and in New Jersey, almost a no-hoper, but as Bednarz organized at the grassroots level, Newark’s new mayor, Cory Booker, began sprinkling speeches with inspirational Obama references and quotes.
In his North Ward introduction of the Democratic Party’s 29th Legislative District candidates in March, 2007, for example, Booker likened Teresa Ruiz, L. Grace Spencer and Albert Coutinho to Obama’s "Joshua Generation."
As most of the rest of the party’s power players stood with Clinton, Booker and Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy officially endorsed Obama on the Illinois senator’s first campaign stop in New Jersey in mid May of 2007.
They met him at Teterboro Airport and stood with him as the cameras flashed, just before the presidential candidate drove to Trenton for a town hall meeting with organized labor at the War Memorial.
That wasn’t the first time Booker met Obama.
At the urging of mutual friends, Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King, the future mayor and future presidential candidate had first sat down together in Newark in 2004.
"This is a nation right now where we don’t need more political leadership," Booker said. "That’s important, but we really need a leader who speaks to our highest aspirations for ourselves; a leader who reflects our beauty and strength as a people, who reflects who we are but also who we can be."
An old Howard Dean supporter from the 2004 presidential primary, Booker’s ally, West Ward Councilman Ronald C. Rice, served as the connecting point between Booker/Healy and NJ for Obama.
Rice and Council President Mildred Crump drove to Hoboken in May of 2007 at an invitation from Bednarz to speak at a $150-a head NJ for Obama fund-raiser.
Rice gave a rousing speech.
In a diner in Newark’s West Ward a few weeks later, the councilman confessed that he didn’t know whether Obama had a legitimate shot in 2008.
"We’re going to keep building, we’ll keep organizing to put ourselves in a position to take advantage of anything that happens," said Rice, who continued to prominently display his "Obama for President" buttons as friends of his told him to get a life.
At his low-key appearance at the War Memorial, Obama repudiated the Clinton-engineered North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and called for more rigorous labor and environmental standards in all future trade agreements.
When UFCW member Kathy Wilder of Wall asked the senator, "What are you going to do about Wal-Mart?" there was an up-swell of boos and groans at the mention of the corporate giant, and Obama dead-panned, "I won’t shop there."
Obama still trailed Clinton in New Jersey by 22 points.
Back in West Paterson in early June, Bednarz had finished his Master’s degree and accepted a full-time position with the Obama campaign in their New Hampshire office.
On the night before he left, the political organizer kicked back a last beer in Hoboken, watching the late night commuters return from Manhattan.
He was committed to Obama. He had been ever since he heard him deliver the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention. Concurrent with his university studies, Bednarz had to this point devoted five solid months of building a statewide network of Obama supporters - a list that grew from four to 25 to nearly 500 members.
But now that he was leaving New Jersey, he couldn’t help but wonder if the entire endeavor was not finally quixotic. He allowed himself only several moments of speculation before concluding that one way or the other, he didn’t care. Obama was the candidate in whom he believed. If Bednarz went down he was going to go down fighting.
He jumped aboard the PATH to Newark, changed trains and headed back to Fairlawn. He would get up and drive to Manchester in the morning and continue organizing.
The new director of NJ for Obama was Keith Hovey, a Montgomery lawyer in his late 30s who immediately began organizing statewide registration drives for the presidential candidate.
"We want to be part of a campaign for a government that is inclusive and intelligent," said Hovey, who as part of his first effort coordinated 200 on-the-ground volunteer canvassers mobilizing in Princeton, Edison, Newark, New Brunswick, Hoboken, Camden, Madison, Hamilton, Plainfield and Sparta.
These volunteers carried two sets of petitions: one to end the war, and one to make Obama president.
With the grassroots effort growing under Hovey’s leadership, the Obama campaign’s national office on July 25, 2007, announced that U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman (D-9) was endorsing Obama for president.
"It’s time to turn the page and bring an end to the Bush-Cheney foreign policy that has left Americans vulnerable here at home and reduced matters of war and national defense to signs and slogans," said Rothman.
As Northeast Regional Co-Chair, Rothman, a six-term congressman, would lead Obama campaign efforts in the region, which includes Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.
Rothman was New Jersey’s first congressman to come aboard - and he would be the only one during the primary season.
Every other Democratic member of the state’s congressional delegation had endorsed Clinton, with the exception of U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (D-12), who stayed neutral until after the June 2008 primary election.
Rothman claimed he had decided to support Obama for president after watching CNN’s YouTube debate, in which Clinton and Obama had fought over how to conduct U.S. foreign policy.
"Barack's appearance... confirmed for me what I've believed all along," said the congressman. "It's new thinking versus old thinking. This notion of Hillary Clinton’s that we should continue down this path of not talking to our enemies is a policy that has proven to be disastrous to our country. These are not the views of someone who professes to be an agent of change."
Picking up on anti-war sentiment, Rothman said the Illinois senator’s public opposition to sending 160,000 U.S. troops to Iraq gives him foreign policy know-how that Clinton frankly lacks.
"I made the similar vote," the Congressman admitted of his 2002 "yes" vote authorizing Bush to use force in Iraq. But Rothman added that he later "declared it to be a mistake."
By the end of July, 2007, reform Mayor Jun Choi of Edison had also endorsed Obama.
"I’ve been leaning Obama for quite some time now," said Choi, who had publicly blasted Bush at an anti-war rally when the president visited Edison for a GOP fund-raiser weeks earlier.
"I wanted to see if there was real momentum in the (Obama) campaign, and there is," said Choi.
The team was coming together.
Booker anchored a $150-a-head Obama fund-raiser at the Robert Treat Hotel in Newark. In a speech to a crowd that included Healy, Hovey, Rice, Cohen, Choi and organizers from around the state packed into a small room, the mayor called for a "sacred effort," not unlike what Frederick Douglass had once ascribed to Lincoln’s second inaugural address.
"We have a mere matter of months before Feb. 5th," said Booker. "This is our state. This is New Jersey. We, the leaders - not those of us with fancy titles, not those of us with fancy salaries... we hold in our hands the destiny of our nation.
"It is time for us," Booker said, "the inheritors of glory and greatness, those of us who scan the current landscape and understand that America is not finished yet... We must put forth a sacred effort, and win for Barack Obama."
http://www.politickernj.com/max/21185/thumbnail-new-jersey-guide-obamaland-part-i
PART 2.
June 30, 2008 - 10:39pm
A thumbnail New Jersey guide to the history of Obamaland, Part II
By Max Pizarro
Obama Campaign State Director Mark Alexander.Obama Campaign State Director Mark Alexander.
The campaign was about to change.
On Oct, 9, 2007, an announcement came down from Chicago regarding New Jersey operations.
Mark Alexander, a Seton Hall University law professor and Obama’s senior policy advisor, would be the campaign’s official state director.
"I am grateful that he is going to carry the fight forward to and through the Feb. 5 contests," Obama said of Alexander. "He is a valued and trusted advisor, and at the same time has deep ties in his home of New Jersey that will be invaluable to our efforts.
"I am proud of the policy work we have done on this campaign and through Mark’s leadership we have built a team of key advisors from the ground up that will continue to offer new and innovative approaches to the challenges this country faces," added the presidential candidate.
A personal friend of Barack and Michelle Obama’s going back a dozen years, Alexander as a child worked on the 1974 Washington, D.C. mayoral campaign of his father, Clifford Alexander, former chairman of the Equal Opportunity Commission. Later, he ran Sen. Bill Bradley’s 2000 presidential campaign and served as counsel to Cory Booker.
The state director began rolling out more elected official endorsements.
State Sen. Shirley Turner (D-Mercer) and Assemblywomen Linda Greenstein, Cleopatra Tucker, and L. Grace Spencer followed up on a September endorsement of Obama made by veteran anti-establishment Democrat, state Sen. Loretta Weinberg of Bergen.
"Sen. Barack Obama is the person to work for the kinds of issues that we women are interested in," Weinberg said at a Trenton press conference with her colleagues. "Mostly these issues are about our families. They are about bringing our kids home from Iraq. They are about the healthcare of people that we love and take care of. They are about our kids’ education, and they are about our environment."
Meanwhile, Alexander interfaced with those grassroots guerillas who had been in the field for months.
In the autumn lead-up to the Nov. 4th, 2007 general election, NJ for Obama leader Keith Hovey held a rally for the Illinois senator in Princeton’s Palmer Square.
"This is a candidate who had the internal fortitude to stand up when most would not, and say that this war is wrong," Hovey told the cheering crowd.
Princeton anti-war activist William Strong still liked New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, mostly based on experience. But most people in the crowd backed Obama.
"Before this event, I walked around Princeton for two hours," said Phil Blackwood, an engineer from Lincroft, who continued to pass out Obama ’08 stickers at the rally.
During the first week of December ’07, the Obama campaign opened its main headquarters in West Orange. A week later, the new state director joined his old friends, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and West Ward Councilman Ronald Rice, at a rally in Newark’s Masonic Temple.
A lot of people in the crowd were NJ for Obama volunteers.
"We’re going to start making some change," Alexander told the crowd of organizers, including Julie Diaz of Perth Amboy, who with her boyfriend Peter Brown was among NJ for Obama’s founding members.
"Change has been a long time coming," Alexander said. "We’re trying to organize ourselves in New Jersey. It’s not going to come easy. No one’s going to give this up. There are a lot of people who want this prize. You’re going to have to walk the streets, you’re going to have to call your friends."
Most of the fatalism about Obama’s campaign was absent now, with new polling numbers not only bolstering morale but filling volunteers with a sense of coming victory.
Michelle Obama said her husband had to win Iowa or it was over, and when she said it some of her New Jersey supporters cringed with the thought that their man could lose in the first contest.
But now the sense of inevitability about Clinton was gone.
"I looked around this last week and sure enough, Barack Obama was up by five points in Iowa," said Rice. "I look around again, and he’s cut Clinton’s lead in New Hampshire to 5% when it was 20% two weeks before then. I looked up again, and black folk are voting for Barack Obama, all over this nation. I looked up one more time, and the race is dead even in South Carolina.
"Newarkers," the councilman told the cheering crowd, "we not only got the best candidate with the best message. We’ve got the best candidate with the best chance of winning not only the Democratic nomination, but winning the presidency next November."
Booker started refining a speech incorporating New Jersey Revolutionary War history that he would use later in the campaign season, in Jersey City. But he also spoke specifically to his candidate’s knowledge of urban issues.
"Our cities should not be places that are charity cases, our cities should be engines of economic prosperity for our nation and I think that’s something Barack Obama understands," said Booker, as organizers registered voters in the Masonic Temple.
On January 3, the day of the Iowa caucuses, Alexander was calmly confident in West Orange headquarters.
"People will have concrete evidence that Barack Obama has real support in a state where there is a large white rural population," the state director said of the African American presidential candidate. "We’ve got to do well in these early states and carry the momentum to the Feb. 5th states, like New Jersey."
Obama won Iowa with 38%, followed by former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) with 30% and Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) with 29%.
That shook the foundations of power.
"It’s not good news for Iowa," admitted State Party Chair Joseph Cryan, an ardent Clinton supporter. "But it’s good news for New Jersey. The message from this is, ‘Let’s wake up and get to work.’ The real start of the campaign is tonight."
Partying with other Obama revelers and CNN’s broadcast on in the background at the bar in Newark’s Robert Treat Hotel, U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman (D-9), northeast regional co-chair of the Obama campaign, said of his candidate, "He is an authentic agent of change. If he were elected, the message he would present to the world is that America gets it.
"We understand that the last seven years under Bush have been a disaster," Rothman added. "People around the world would see that America, the land of such idealism and hope, is back, and that the callous and cynical George Bush era is over."
Coming out of Iowa and in the days leading up to the New Hampshire primaries, it looked as though Obama could romp to a blowout victory over Clinton.
Edison Mayor Jun Choi, Assemblyman Neil Cohen (D-Union), and Alexander rallied the troops at a diner in Choi’s hometown.
"Bring it home, New Hampshire," volunteers cried happily.
Hyped for months as a likely battleground, maybe New Jersey wasn’t going to matter in the end. Maybe Clinton would melt down in New Hampshire and the Democratic Primary would be over.
"We saw something happen on Thursday night that was truly remarkable," Alexander told the crowd of Obama supporters. "There are different ways to think about it: a snowball rolling downhill, gathering that momentum; that drop, that little drop in the pond that starts to ripple out; you can think about it as an earthquake perhaps in Iowa."
But on Jan. 8, to the chagrin of NJ for Obama founder Damian Bednarz, who helped collect the numbers in the campaign’s Manchester, N.H. war room, Clinton staged a comeback, beating Obama, 39-36%, with Edwards trailing at 17% and starting what appeared to be an irreversible capsize.
A day later, Obama appeared before an overflow crowd at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City. The local troops had hoped to welcome him as the winner of the Granite State and maybe of the primary entire, but there was little disappointment in the room.
His improbable victory in Iowa still inspired awe and anyway he had not lost to Clinton by a sizable margin in New Hampshire.
"Obama isn’t a person anymore, he’s a movie," said Hoboken councilman Michael Russo.
Bunched along the rope line in the gym and waiting for Obama were Brown, Diaz and Hovey, Cohen and Rice, Newark Council President Mildred Crump, Ocean County organizer Stacy Lubrecht, Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy and Booker and Jersey City Deputy Mayor Kibili Tayari. Among them stood other grassroots and local elected officials who supported Obama.
A veteran of the Civil Rights movement, Tayari said his work registering Jersey City voters and manning GOTV ops. before the Feb. 5th primary would be the most important work of his life.
"A new president in the White House who doesn't simply come out of the Washington establishment will restore a sense of integrity to our Democratic republic," Tayari said.
Another Civil Rights-era Obama backer, Cohen, who had been with the campaign almost from the beginning, watched Obama pass at close range on the runway to the podium.
"He may have belonged to us in the beginning," said the assemblyman. "There was the sense that now he belongs to the country."
But New Jersey still had New Jersey, and the dogfight Alexander came in to wage was unfolding now and in even more dramatic fashion than anticipated with the score tightened between Obama and Clinton.
With less than a month to go before the primary, Booker invoked the Battle of Trenton.
"We are the great state of New Jersey," he said. "Our democracy started right here, in a pivotal fight. But the cause of justice goes on. We now have a chance to make real on the boldest dreams for America."
http://politickernj.com/max/21191/thumbnail-new-jersey-guide-history-obamaland-part-ii
PART 3.
July 2, 2008 - 2:56pm
A thumbnail New Jersey guide to Obamaland, Part III
By Max Pizarro
[pic]
Newark Mayor Cory Booker, backing up Senate President Richard Codey's endorsement of Obama.Newark Mayor Cory Booker, backing up Senate President Richard Codey's endorsement of Obama.
Obama Campaign State Director Mark Alexander knew it would be hard to pry Sen. Hillary Clinton’s supporters loose in New Jersey after her victory in New Hampshire.
This was a fight now, and Clinton’s people were solid.
"We have an opportunity here in Hudson - Hudson, Hispanics, Hillary and history," Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) cried to a North Bergen audience of mostly Latinos with Clinton on stage.
The response was near to deafening with Clinton standing on stage with Menendez, U.S. Rep. Albio Sires (D-13) and state Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex).
But that didn’t mean there weren’t other opportunities for Obama; in fact, one big opportunity, in the form of Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex), who was at the moment glumly serving as state director for the foundering campaign of John Edwards.
Alexander knew Codey. He also knew Codey was close to former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley (D-NJ), who had come onto the Obama campaign as an advisor.
Alexander started working the phones.
A basketball coach used to pulling a player off the floor when he can’t score or rebound, Codey was watching Edwards closely.
"He’s going to have to do something here in Nevada," said the former governor after his candidate’s back-to-back losses in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Edwards finished in third place out west, and all signs were that the candidate’s "change-agent" message was lost in Obama fever.
Codey felt bad. He had forged a connection with Edwards when the latter ran for vice president on a ticket with John Kerry in 2004. While Codey saw in Kerry’s lordly forbearance a troubling lack of street smarts, he liked the blue collar appeal of Edwards and thought the former senator from North Carolina could win a general election.
Going into Nevada, Codey had hinted that he might withdraw his support for Edwards if the candidate failed to impress there or in his native state of South Carolina.
Codey hung in post Nevada, but Edwards tanked in South Carolina and four days later announced he would end his run for the presidency.
Like Alexander, State Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen) was already working Codey hard about coming over to the Obama Campaign.
A foe of the Bergen County Democratic Organization, Weinberg tried to appeal to the Senate President’s longtime resistance to bossism, including his feuds with South Jersey Democratic leader George Norcross, and North Ward Democratic czar Steve Adubato.
Weinberg found a natural comfort level with Obama because of the independence she identified in his supporters.
"I would have gone with Hillary," Weinberg said. "But it’s like I told the governor when he asked me why I couldn’t back her. I told him, ‘She’s acting like one of the boys.’ By that I mean, I didn’t see any evidence of a grassroots campaign. She had the old guard, the old boys’ network, and that appeared to be about it in terms of a campaign in New Jersey."
There was no immediate word from Codey.
Then Ray Durkin, former state director of the Democratic Party, called Alexander and Bradley and told them if they wanted Codey to join them they should have Obama call the former governor directly and ask him for his support.
The day after Edwards dropped out, Codey convened a press conference at the Wilshire Grand Hotel in his home town of South Orange. This was six days before the Feb. 5th New Jersey primary.
Surrounded by Obama supporters, including U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman (D-9), Alexander, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, state Sen. Shirley Turner (D-Mercer), and Weinberg, Codey endorsed Obama.
"As governor and as senate president, I have built coalitions of Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives alike to do what is right for New Jersey," Codey said. "This is the only way to govern effectively, and I have long been appalled by the slash and burn, winner-take-all kind of partisan politics practiced too often by both parties in Washington.
"Barack Obama has the unique ability to rise above the politics of fear and division to bring the change we desperately need," he added. "Like myself, building coalitions to get results has been the cause of Barack Obama's life, not just the rhetoric of a campaign."
Codey saved for last the anecdote about his phone conversation with Obama.
"I asked him what’s the skinny about the fact that he’s part Irish. He said to me, ‘Governor, I swear to you, I am.’"
Knowing Obama’s late father was a full-blooded Kenyan, Codey said he then jokingly asked the presidential candidate, "‘Now the Irish part, is that on your father’s side?’"
Codey was so thrilled by the story that when Weinberg at the press conference couldn’t resist jumping into Codey’s narrative and saying, "That’s right, O’bama," the former governor said amid laughter, "Don’t take away my lines."
"I said you’re Irish, right? And he said, right. And I told him that means we’re brothers," Codey said. "It was a good conversation."
Codey had campaigned for Bradley in New Hampshire in 2000 when the ex-NBA star ran unsuccessfully for president. With Codey’s remarks concluded, Bradley now towered over the podium.
Alert to special interests dominating elections and deciding the fate of the country to the detriment of most Americans, Bradley noted that the United States’ ranks 114 worldwide in voter turnout in national elections. In Bradley’s view, Obama’s anti-establishment campaign had the long-term potential to re-engage Americans in politics.
"I think every couple of generations, somebody comes along who reminds us that we're Americans, and what it means to be an American, by appealing to the ideals that animated the founding of the country," Bradley said. "I think that is what he (Obama) has done in a remarkable way, and he personifies the very best of our country."
Clinton still had an edge in New Jersey. Polls showed her up by five to ten points here.
"The media has really given Obama a pass," complained Trenton Mayor Doug Palmer, a Clinton supporter. "They haven't scrutinized his performance or his record. Just as an example, his initial statement that he was opposed to the war: that was a prescient and wise exercise of judgement on his part. But then as Hillary's pointed out, once he got into office, he voted to continue to fund the war."
In the weeks leading up to Feb. 5th, Alexander oversaw multiple statewide days of action, in which Obama volunteers went door-to-door, made phone calls and waved Obama for America signs on train platforms.
"I want everybody to leave here with something to do today," the state director had told a crowd of 5,000 people in Jersey City on Jan. 9.
On the weekend before Election Day, 1,000 Obama volunteers worked the City of Newark.
"I’m all Obama all the time," said Booker, stopping by the campaign’s Broad Street headquarters to rally campaign soldiers. Chicago infused the New Jersey campaign with $100,000-worth of glossy fliers that highlighted the recent endorsements of U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy and his niece, Caroline.
It was a last minute happening on a work day in bad weather, but Obama allies still had hoped to pack the IZOD Center for a Feb. 4 rally, featuring the presidential candidate, the Kennedys and movie actor Robert DeNiro. A veteran guard scanned the mostly empty arena and guessed 6,000 people, a figure that most media sources later put closer to 3,000.
New Jersey activists said up close Obama looked exhausted.
"He got embarrassed today at the Meadowlands," a Clinton supporter said Monday night, right before Election Day. "He’s going to get buried in New Jersey tomorrow."
In the Essex County Clerk’s Office with night falling on Election Day, clerk Chris Durkin watched the numbers come in from the outlying towns and from Newark. Voter turnout was huge in the county seat, and that was likely very good news for Obama.
In the Wilshire Grand, Obama’s supporters started celebrating, but their glee proved decidedly premature, as the larger view showed Clinton taking 16 of New Jersey’s 21 counties.
In Essex, Obama bested Clinton in 13 of the 22 towns. He didn’t blow her out in Newark - earning 57% to 43% of the votes in New Jersey’s biggest city - but it was good enough for him to win Essex: 56% to 42%.
Obama also won the progressive-leaning Mercer, 54% to 44%. He squeaked out a 50% to 48% victory in Union, and beat Clinton by one and two points respectively in the very low Democratic Party turnout Republican strongholds of Hunterdon and Somerset.
But he lost badly in Bergen, 59% to 39%. In Hudson, where Menendez had manned an aggressive machine operation, Clinton crushed Obama, 61% to 36%, and in Middlesex, Clinton won, 57% to 40%.
It added up to a nine point, 54% to 45% Clinton victory in New Jersey.
On stage in the Wilshire, weariness and heartbreak could be heard in the voices of some of Obama’s supporters. They had worked on the street level at this, many of them, especially the local elected officials. They could not at that moment grasp the effects of a larger political war beyond New Jersey.
Defeat sank in painfully.
But Booker picked up the fight themes laid down by Codey and Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy, and digested the still larger view - which showed Obama winning more of the 22 Super Tuesday states at stake, although Clinton claimed the more delegate-plenty states.
The up close and personal disappointment in New Jersey notwithstanding, Feb. 5th proved to be yet another Clinton-Obama stalemate on the nationwide primary map.
The fight would continue.
That meant advantage Obama, in Booker’s view, because the Illinois senator had always been the underdog. The fact that he had shaken New Jersey in losing was a tribute to the campaign’s momentum, according to the Newark mayor.
"The people saw within their hearts and within their nation their dreams, they began to hear echoes of old, from people of old," said Booker. "They told their children and their families 'I believe.' They believed in Georgia and Connecticut and Illinois... They believed that our nation could come together."
Over the cheers that filled the ballroom, which moments earlier had been silent with a sense of loss, Booker cried, "America will rise again and be the giant of love."
Two weeks later, powerful South Jersey Democratic Party boss Norcross threw his support to Obama.
http://www.politickernj.com/max/21250/thumbnail-new-jersey-guide-obamaland-part-iii
PART 1.
June 30, 2008 - 5:00pm
A thumbnail New Jersey guide to the history of Obamaland, Part I
By Max Pizarro
Category: PresidentTags: Cory Booker, Jun Choi, Barack Obama, Steve Rothman, Mildred Crump, John Adler, Neil Cohen, Damian Bednarz, Jerramiah Healy, Julie Diaz, Hilllary Clinton, Ronald C. Rice, Ketih Hovey[pic]
NJ for Obama organizers Julie Diaz and Keith Hovey.NJ for Obama organizers Julie Diaz and Keith Hovey.
The Obama campaign started small here, with handfuls of coffee house organizers lining up behind a grassroots operation called NJ for Obama in the face of a big party machine backing Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), and an unpopular war in Iraq.
Founded in an Edison coffee shop in December of 2006, the group’s leader was Damian Bednarz, 25, a Master’s student in international relations with Seton Hall University’s Whitehead School of Diplomacy.
"Obama has something that Hillary Clinton can’t buy or reproduce, and that’s a sense of inspiration," Bednarz said at the time. "If anything, I’m encouraged by Clinton’s frontrunner status because I know our work is so special."
In the months following, some elected officials in the months endorsed the Illinois senator, among them Assemblyman Neil Cohen (D-Union), who came out in favor of Obama in April of 2007, followed by state Sen. John Adler (D-Camden) a couple of weeks later.
"At this time we need someone special... someone who is going to build a bridge brick by brick to peace through negotiation," said Cohen, a graduate of Howard University who arrived at politics through the Civil Rights era.
One common theme early was the appreciation that Obama’s supporters showed for their candidate’s opposition to the Iraq War - which differentiated him from Clinton, who in 2002 authorized President George W. Bush to send in troops.
"As Obama said, he’s not afraid of going into wars," said Cohen, "he’s afraid of going into dumb wars."
The sense at this point was that Obama was at best a longshot nationally and in New Jersey, almost a no-hoper, but as Bednarz organized at the grassroots level, Newark’s new mayor, Cory Booker, began sprinkling speeches with inspirational Obama references and quotes.
In his North Ward introduction of the Democratic Party’s 29th Legislative District candidates in March, 2007, for example, Booker likened Teresa Ruiz, L. Grace Spencer and Albert Coutinho to Obama’s "Joshua Generation."
As most of the rest of the party’s power players stood with Clinton, Booker and Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy officially endorsed Obama on the Illinois senator’s first campaign stop in New Jersey in mid May of 2007.
They met him at Teterboro Airport and stood with him as the cameras flashed, just before the presidential candidate drove to Trenton for a town hall meeting with organized labor at the War Memorial.
That wasn’t the first time Booker met Obama.
At the urging of mutual friends, Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King, the future mayor and future presidential candidate had first sat down together in Newark in 2004.
"This is a nation right now where we don’t need more political leadership," Booker said. "That’s important, but we really need a leader who speaks to our highest aspirations for ourselves; a leader who reflects our beauty and strength as a people, who reflects who we are but also who we can be."
An old Howard Dean supporter from the 2004 presidential primary, Booker’s ally, West Ward Councilman Ronald C. Rice, served as the connecting point between Booker/Healy and NJ for Obama.
Rice and Council President Mildred Crump drove to Hoboken in May of 2007 at an invitation from Bednarz to speak at a $150-a head NJ for Obama fund-raiser.
Rice gave a rousing speech.
In a diner in Newark’s West Ward a few weeks later, the councilman confessed that he didn’t know whether Obama had a legitimate shot in 2008.
"We’re going to keep building, we’ll keep organizing to put ourselves in a position to take advantage of anything that happens," said Rice, who continued to prominently display his "Obama for President" buttons as friends of his told him to get a life.
At his low-key appearance at the War Memorial, Obama repudiated the Clinton-engineered North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and called for more rigorous labor and environmental standards in all future trade agreements.
When UFCW member Kathy Wilder of Wall asked the senator, "What are you going to do about Wal-Mart?" there was an up-swell of boos and groans at the mention of the corporate giant, and Obama dead-panned, "I won’t shop there."
Obama still trailed Clinton in New Jersey by 22 points.
Back in West Paterson in early June, Bednarz had finished his Master’s degree and accepted a full-time position with the Obama campaign in their New Hampshire office.
On the night before he left, the political organizer kicked back a last beer in Hoboken, watching the late night commuters return from Manhattan.
He was committed to Obama. He had been ever since he heard him deliver the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention. Concurrent with his university studies, Bednarz had to this point devoted five solid months of building a statewide network of Obama supporters - a list that grew from four to 25 to nearly 500 members.
But now that he was leaving New Jersey, he couldn’t help but wonder if the entire endeavor was not finally quixotic. He allowed himself only several moments of speculation before concluding that one way or the other, he didn’t care. Obama was the candidate in whom he believed. If Bednarz went down he was going to go down fighting.
He jumped aboard the PATH to Newark, changed trains and headed back to Fairlawn. He would get up and drive to Manchester in the morning and continue organizing.
The new director of NJ for Obama was Keith Hovey, a Montgomery lawyer in his late 30s who immediately began organizing statewide registration drives for the presidential candidate.
"We want to be part of a campaign for a government that is inclusive and intelligent," said Hovey, who as part of his first effort coordinated 200 on-the-ground volunteer canvassers mobilizing in Princeton, Edison, Newark, New Brunswick, Hoboken, Camden, Madison, Hamilton, Plainfield and Sparta.
These volunteers carried two sets of petitions: one to end the war, and one to make Obama president.
With the grassroots effort growing under Hovey’s leadership, the Obama campaign’s national office on July 25, 2007, announced that U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman (D-9) was endorsing Obama for president.
"It’s time to turn the page and bring an end to the Bush-Cheney foreign policy that has left Americans vulnerable here at home and reduced matters of war and national defense to signs and slogans," said Rothman.
As Northeast Regional Co-Chair, Rothman, a six-term congressman, would lead Obama campaign efforts in the region, which includes Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.
Rothman was New Jersey’s first congressman to come aboard - and he would be the only one during the primary season.
Every other Democratic member of the state’s congressional delegation had endorsed Clinton, with the exception of U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (D-12), who stayed neutral until after the June 2008 primary election.
Rothman claimed he had decided to support Obama for president after watching CNN’s YouTube debate, in which Clinton and Obama had fought over how to conduct U.S. foreign policy.
"Barack's appearance... confirmed for me what I've believed all along," said the congressman. "It's new thinking versus old thinking. This notion of Hillary Clinton’s that we should continue down this path of not talking to our enemies is a policy that has proven to be disastrous to our country. These are not the views of someone who professes to be an agent of change."
Picking up on anti-war sentiment, Rothman said the Illinois senator’s public opposition to sending 160,000 U.S. troops to Iraq gives him foreign policy know-how that Clinton frankly lacks.
"I made the similar vote," the Congressman admitted of his 2002 "yes" vote authorizing Bush to use force in Iraq. But Rothman added that he later "declared it to be a mistake."
By the end of July, 2007, reform Mayor Jun Choi of Edison had also endorsed Obama.
"I’ve been leaning Obama for quite some time now," said Choi, who had publicly blasted Bush at an anti-war rally when the president visited Edison for a GOP fund-raiser weeks earlier.
"I wanted to see if there was real momentum in the (Obama) campaign, and there is," said Choi.
The team was coming together.
Booker anchored a $150-a-head Obama fund-raiser at the Robert Treat Hotel in Newark. In a speech to a crowd that included Healy, Hovey, Rice, Cohen, Choi and organizers from around the state packed into a small room, the mayor called for a "sacred effort," not unlike what Frederick Douglass had once ascribed to Lincoln’s second inaugural address.
"We have a mere matter of months before Feb. 5th," said Booker. "This is our state. This is New Jersey. We, the leaders - not those of us with fancy titles, not those of us with fancy salaries... we hold in our hands the destiny of our nation.
"It is time for us," Booker said, "the inheritors of glory and greatness, those of us who scan the current landscape and understand that America is not finished yet... We must put forth a sacred effort, and win for Barack Obama."
http://www.politickernj.com/max/21185/thumbnail-new-jersey-guide-obamaland-part-i
PART 2.
June 30, 2008 - 10:39pm
A thumbnail New Jersey guide to the history of Obamaland, Part II
By Max Pizarro
Category: PresidentTags: Cory Booker, Jun Choi, Linda Greenstein, Loretta Weinberg, Mark Alexander, Barack Obama, Steve Rothman, Hillary Clinton, Joseph Cryan, Cleopatra Tucker, Neil Cohen, Shirley Turner, Grace Spencer, Damian Bednarz, Jerramiah Healy, Keith Hovey, Kibili Tayari[pic]
Obama Campaign State Director Mark Alexander.Obama Campaign State Director Mark Alexander.
The campaign was about to change.
On Oct, 9, 2007, an announcement came down from Chicago regarding New Jersey operations.
Mark Alexander, a Seton Hall University law professor and Obama’s senior policy advisor, would be the campaign’s official state director.
"I am grateful that he is going to carry the fight forward to and through the Feb. 5 contests," Obama said of Alexander. "He is a valued and trusted advisor, and at the same time has deep ties in his home of New Jersey that will be invaluable to our efforts.
"I am proud of the policy work we have done on this campaign and through Mark’s leadership we have built a team of key advisors from the ground up that will continue to offer new and innovative approaches to the challenges this country faces," added the presidential candidate.
A personal friend of Barack and Michelle Obama’s going back a dozen years, Alexander as a child worked on the 1974 Washington, D.C. mayoral campaign of his father, Clifford Alexander, former chairman of the Equal Opportunity Commission. Later, he ran Sen. Bill Bradley’s 2000 presidential campaign and served as counsel to Cory Booker.
The state director began rolling out more elected official endorsements.
State Sen. Shirley Turner (D-Mercer) and Assemblywomen Linda Greenstein, Cleopatra Tucker, and L. Grace Spencer followed up on a September endorsement of Obama made by veteran anti-establishment Democrat, state Sen. Loretta Weinberg of Bergen.
"Sen. Barack Obama is the person to work for the kinds of issues that we women are interested in," Weinberg said at a Trenton press conference with her colleagues. "Mostly these issues are about our families. They are about bringing our kids home from Iraq. They are about the healthcare of people that we love and take care of. They are about our kids’ education, and they are about our environment."
Meanwhile, Alexander interfaced with those grassroots guerillas who had been in the field for months.
In the autumn lead-up to the Nov. 4th, 2007 general election, NJ for Obama leader Keith Hovey held a rally for the Illinois senator in Princeton’s Palmer Square.
"This is a candidate who had the internal fortitude to stand up when most would not, and say that this war is wrong," Hovey told the cheering crowd.
Princeton anti-war activist William Strong still liked New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, mostly based on experience. But most people in the crowd backed Obama.
"Before this event, I walked around Princeton for two hours," said Phil Blackwood, an engineer from Lincroft, who continued to pass out Obama ’08 stickers at the rally.
During the first week of December ’07, the Obama campaign opened its main headquarters in West Orange. A week later, the new state director joined his old friends, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and West Ward Councilman Ronald Rice, at a rally in Newark’s Masonic Temple.
A lot of people in the crowd were NJ for Obama volunteers.
"We’re going to start making some change," Alexander told the crowd of organizers, including Julie Diaz of Perth Amboy, who with her boyfriend Peter Brown was among NJ for Obama’s founding members.
"Change has been a long time coming," Alexander said. "We’re trying to organize ourselves in New Jersey. It’s not going to come easy. No one’s going to give this up. There are a lot of people who want this prize. You’re going to have to walk the streets, you’re going to have to call your friends."
Most of the fatalism about Obama’s campaign was absent now, with new polling numbers not only bolstering morale but filling volunteers with a sense of coming victory.
Michelle Obama said her husband had to win Iowa or it was over, and when she said it some of her New Jersey supporters cringed with the thought that their man could lose in the first contest.
But now the sense of inevitability about Clinton was gone.
"I looked around this last week and sure enough, Barack Obama was up by five points in Iowa," said Rice. "I look around again, and he’s cut Clinton’s lead in New Hampshire to 5% when it was 20% two weeks before then. I looked up again, and black folk are voting for Barack Obama, all over this nation. I looked up one more time, and the race is dead even in South Carolina.
"Newarkers," the councilman told the cheering crowd, "we not only got the best candidate with the best message. We’ve got the best candidate with the best chance of winning not only the Democratic nomination, but winning the presidency next November."
Booker started refining a speech incorporating New Jersey Revolutionary War history that he would use later in the campaign season, in Jersey City. But he also spoke specifically to his candidate’s knowledge of urban issues.
"Our cities should not be places that are charity cases, our cities should be engines of economic prosperity for our nation and I think that’s something Barack Obama understands," said Booker, as organizers registered voters in the Masonic Temple.
On January 3, the day of the Iowa caucuses, Alexander was calmly confident in West Orange headquarters.
"People will have concrete evidence that Barack Obama has real support in a state where there is a large white rural population," the state director said of the African American presidential candidate. "We’ve got to do well in these early states and carry the momentum to the Feb. 5th states, like New Jersey."
Obama won Iowa with 38%, followed by former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) with 30% and Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) with 29%.
That shook the foundations of power.
"It’s not good news for Iowa," admitted State Party Chair Joseph Cryan, an ardent Clinton supporter. "But it’s good news for New Jersey. The message from this is, ‘Let’s wake up and get to work.’ The real start of the campaign is tonight."
Partying with other Obama revelers and CNN’s broadcast on in the background at the bar in Newark’s Robert Treat Hotel, U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman (D-9), northeast regional co-chair of the Obama campaign, said of his candidate, "He is an authentic agent of change. If he were elected, the message he would present to the world is that America gets it.
"We understand that the last seven years under Bush have been a disaster," Rothman added. "People around the world would see that America, the land of such idealism and hope, is back, and that the callous and cynical George Bush era is over."
Coming out of Iowa and in the days leading up to the New Hampshire primaries, it looked as though Obama could romp to a blowout victory over Clinton.
Edison Mayor Jun Choi, Assemblyman Neil Cohen (D-Union), and Alexander rallied the troops at a diner in Choi’s hometown.
"Bring it home, New Hampshire," volunteers cried happily.
Hyped for months as a likely battleground, maybe New Jersey wasn’t going to matter in the end. Maybe Clinton would melt down in New Hampshire and the Democratic Primary would be over.
"We saw something happen on Thursday night that was truly remarkable," Alexander told the crowd of Obama supporters. "There are different ways to think about it: a snowball rolling downhill, gathering that momentum; that drop, that little drop in the pond that starts to ripple out; you can think about it as an earthquake perhaps in Iowa."
But on Jan. 8, to the chagrin of NJ for Obama founder Damian Bednarz, who helped collect the numbers in the campaign’s Manchester, N.H. war room, Clinton staged a comeback, beating Obama, 39-36%, with Edwards trailing at 17% and starting what appeared to be an irreversible capsize.
A day later, Obama appeared before an overflow crowd at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City. The local troops had hoped to welcome him as the winner of the Granite State and maybe of the primary entire, but there was little disappointment in the room.
His improbable victory in Iowa still inspired awe and anyway he had not lost to Clinton by a sizable margin in New Hampshire.
"Obama isn’t a person anymore, he’s a movie," said Hoboken councilman Michael Russo.
Bunched along the rope line in the gym and waiting for Obama were Brown, Diaz and Hovey, Cohen and Rice, Newark Council President Mildred Crump, Ocean County organizer Stacy Lubrecht, Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy and Booker and Jersey City Deputy Mayor Kibili Tayari. Among them stood other grassroots and local elected officials who supported Obama.
A veteran of the Civil Rights movement, Tayari said his work registering Jersey City voters and manning GOTV ops. before the Feb. 5th primary would be the most important work of his life.
"A new president in the White House who doesn't simply come out of the Washington establishment will restore a sense of integrity to our Democratic republic," Tayari said.
Another Civil Rights-era Obama backer, Cohen, who had been with the campaign almost from the beginning, watched Obama pass at close range on the runway to the podium.
"He may have belonged to us in the beginning," said the assemblyman. "There was the sense that now he belongs to the country."
But New Jersey still had New Jersey, and the dogfight Alexander came in to wage was unfolding now and in even more dramatic fashion than anticipated with the score tightened between Obama and Clinton.
With less than a month to go before the primary, Booker invoked the Battle of Trenton.
"We are the great state of New Jersey," he said. "Our democracy started right here, in a pivotal fight. But the cause of justice goes on. We now have a chance to make real on the boldest dreams for America."
http://politickernj.com/max/21191/thumbnail-new-jersey-guide-history-obamaland-part-ii
PART 3.
July 2, 2008 - 2:56pm
A thumbnail New Jersey guide to Obamaland, Part III
By Max Pizarro
Category: PresidentTags: Steve Rothman, Shirley Turner, Richard Codey, Ray Durkin, Mark Alexander, Loretta Weinberg, Jerramiah Healy, Hillary Clinton, Edward Kennedy, Cory Booker, Chris Durkin, George Norcross, Caroline Kennedy, Bill Bradley, Barack Obama
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Newark Mayor Cory Booker, backing up Senate President Richard Codey's endorsement of Obama.Newark Mayor Cory Booker, backing up Senate President Richard Codey's endorsement of Obama.
Obama Campaign State Director Mark Alexander knew it would be hard to pry Sen. Hillary Clinton’s supporters loose in New Jersey after her victory in New Hampshire.
This was a fight now, and Clinton’s people were solid.
"We have an opportunity here in Hudson - Hudson, Hispanics, Hillary and history," Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) cried to a North Bergen audience of mostly Latinos with Clinton on stage.
The response was near to deafening with Clinton standing on stage with Menendez, U.S. Rep. Albio Sires (D-13) and state Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex).
But that didn’t mean there weren’t other opportunities for Obama; in fact, one big opportunity, in the form of Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex), who was at the moment glumly serving as state director for the foundering campaign of John Edwards.
Alexander knew Codey. He also knew Codey was close to former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley (D-NJ), who had come onto the Obama campaign as an advisor.
Alexander started working the phones.
A basketball coach used to pulling a player off the floor when he can’t score or rebound, Codey was watching Edwards closely.
"He’s going to have to do something here in Nevada," said the former governor after his candidate’s back-to-back losses in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Edwards finished in third place out west, and all signs were that the candidate’s "change-agent" message was lost in Obama fever.
Codey felt bad. He had forged a connection with Edwards when the latter ran for vice president on a ticket with John Kerry in 2004. While Codey saw in Kerry’s lordly forbearance a troubling lack of street smarts, he liked the blue collar appeal of Edwards and thought the former senator from North Carolina could win a general election.
Going into Nevada, Codey had hinted that he might withdraw his support for Edwards if the candidate failed to impress there or in his native state of South Carolina.
Codey hung in post Nevada, but Edwards tanked in South Carolina and four days later announced he would end his run for the presidency.
Like Alexander, State Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen) was already working Codey hard about coming over to the Obama Campaign.
A foe of the Bergen County Democratic Organization, Weinberg tried to appeal to the Senate President’s longtime resistance to bossism, including his feuds with South Jersey Democratic leader George Norcross, and North Ward Democratic czar Steve Adubato.
Weinberg found a natural comfort level with Obama because of the independence she identified in his supporters.
"I would have gone with Hillary," Weinberg said. "But it’s like I told the governor when he asked me why I couldn’t back her. I told him, ‘She’s acting like one of the boys.’ By that I mean, I didn’t see any evidence of a grassroots campaign. She had the old guard, the old boys’ network, and that appeared to be about it in terms of a campaign in New Jersey."
There was no immediate word from Codey.
Then Ray Durkin, former state director of the Democratic Party, called Alexander and Bradley and told them if they wanted Codey to join them they should have Obama call the former governor directly and ask him for his support.
The day after Edwards dropped out, Codey convened a press conference at the Wilshire Grand Hotel in his home town of South Orange. This was six days before the Feb. 5th New Jersey primary.
Surrounded by Obama supporters, including U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman (D-9), Alexander, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, state Sen. Shirley Turner (D-Mercer), and Weinberg, Codey endorsed Obama.
"As governor and as senate president, I have built coalitions of Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives alike to do what is right for New Jersey," Codey said. "This is the only way to govern effectively, and I have long been appalled by the slash and burn, winner-take-all kind of partisan politics practiced too often by both parties in Washington.
"Barack Obama has the unique ability to rise above the politics of fear and division to bring the change we desperately need," he added. "Like myself, building coalitions to get results has been the cause of Barack Obama's life, not just the rhetoric of a campaign."
Codey saved for last the anecdote about his phone conversation with Obama.
"I asked him what’s the skinny about the fact that he’s part Irish. He said to me, ‘Governor, I swear to you, I am.’"
Knowing Obama’s late father was a full-blooded Kenyan, Codey said he then jokingly asked the presidential candidate, "‘Now the Irish part, is that on your father’s side?’"
Codey was so thrilled by the story that when Weinberg at the press conference couldn’t resist jumping into Codey’s narrative and saying, "That’s right, O’bama," the former governor said amid laughter, "Don’t take away my lines."
"I said you’re Irish, right? And he said, right. And I told him that means we’re brothers," Codey said. "It was a good conversation."
Codey had campaigned for Bradley in New Hampshire in 2000 when the ex-NBA star ran unsuccessfully for president. With Codey’s remarks concluded, Bradley now towered over the podium.
Alert to special interests dominating elections and deciding the fate of the country to the detriment of most Americans, Bradley noted that the United States’ ranks 114 worldwide in voter turnout in national elections. In Bradley’s view, Obama’s anti-establishment campaign had the long-term potential to re-engage Americans in politics.
"I think every couple of generations, somebody comes along who reminds us that we're Americans, and what it means to be an American, by appealing to the ideals that animated the founding of the country," Bradley said. "I think that is what he (Obama) has done in a remarkable way, and he personifies the very best of our country."
Clinton still had an edge in New Jersey. Polls showed her up by five to ten points here.
"The media has really given Obama a pass," complained Trenton Mayor Doug Palmer, a Clinton supporter. "They haven't scrutinized his performance or his record. Just as an example, his initial statement that he was opposed to the war: that was a prescient and wise exercise of judgement on his part. But then as Hillary's pointed out, once he got into office, he voted to continue to fund the war."
In the weeks leading up to Feb. 5th, Alexander oversaw multiple statewide days of action, in which Obama volunteers went door-to-door, made phone calls and waved Obama for America signs on train platforms.
"I want everybody to leave here with something to do today," the state director had told a crowd of 5,000 people in Jersey City on Jan. 9.
On the weekend before Election Day, 1,000 Obama volunteers worked the City of Newark.
"I’m all Obama all the time," said Booker, stopping by the campaign’s Broad Street headquarters to rally campaign soldiers. Chicago infused the New Jersey campaign with $100,000-worth of glossy fliers that highlighted the recent endorsements of U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy and his niece, Caroline.
It was a last minute happening on a work day in bad weather, but Obama allies still had hoped to pack the IZOD Center for a Feb. 4 rally, featuring the presidential candidate, the Kennedys and movie actor Robert DeNiro. A veteran guard scanned the mostly empty arena and guessed 6,000 people, a figure that most media sources later put closer to 3,000.
New Jersey activists said up close Obama looked exhausted.
"He got embarrassed today at the Meadowlands," a Clinton supporter said Monday night, right before Election Day. "He’s going to get buried in New Jersey tomorrow."
In the Essex County Clerk’s Office with night falling on Election Day, clerk Chris Durkin watched the numbers come in from the outlying towns and from Newark. Voter turnout was huge in the county seat, and that was likely very good news for Obama.
In the Wilshire Grand, Obama’s supporters started celebrating, but their glee proved decidedly premature, as the larger view showed Clinton taking 16 of New Jersey’s 21 counties.
In Essex, Obama bested Clinton in 13 of the 22 towns. He didn’t blow her out in Newark - earning 57% to 43% of the votes in New Jersey’s biggest city - but it was good enough for him to win Essex: 56% to 42%.
Obama also won the progressive-leaning Mercer, 54% to 44%. He squeaked out a 50% to 48% victory in Union, and beat Clinton by one and two points respectively in the very low Democratic Party turnout Republican strongholds of Hunterdon and Somerset.
But he lost badly in Bergen, 59% to 39%. In Hudson, where Menendez had manned an aggressive machine operation, Clinton crushed Obama, 61% to 36%, and in Middlesex, Clinton won, 57% to 40%.
It added up to a nine point, 54% to 45% Clinton victory in New Jersey.
On stage in the Wilshire, weariness and heartbreak could be heard in the voices of some of Obama’s supporters. They had worked on the street level at this, many of them, especially the local elected officials. They could not at that moment grasp the effects of a larger political war beyond New Jersey.
Defeat sank in painfully.
But Booker picked up the fight themes laid down by Codey and Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy, and digested the still larger view - which showed Obama winning more of the 22 Super Tuesday states at stake, although Clinton claimed the more delegate-plenty states.
The up close and personal disappointment in New Jersey notwithstanding, Feb. 5th proved to be yet another Clinton-Obama stalemate on the nationwide primary map.
The fight would continue.
That meant advantage Obama, in Booker’s view, because the Illinois senator had always been the underdog. The fact that he had shaken New Jersey in losing was a tribute to the campaign’s momentum, according to the Newark mayor.
"The people saw within their hearts and within their nation their dreams, they began to hear echoes of old, from people of old," said Booker. "They told their children and their families 'I believe.' They believed in Georgia and Connecticut and Illinois... They believed that our nation could come together."
Over the cheers that filled the ballroom, which moments earlier had been silent with a sense of loss, Booker cried, "America will rise again and be the giant of love."
Two weeks later, powerful South Jersey Democratic Party boss Norcross threw his support to Obama.
http://www.politickernj.com/max/21250/thumbnail-new-jersey-guide-obamaland-part-iii
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