Issue 156: Hudson County politics go sideways.
Plus: busy day in Lincoln Park, return of the feral cats, and more!
Good morning! The heat is killing me, my dog is sick again, and we’re getting ready to go out of town for part of next week. So the newsletter this week is almost completely focused on some local politics stories I’ve been asked about, and that’s about it (well, a few extras sprinkled in too). Hopefully I’ll be back in a week with more on voter turnout and other issues. Stay cool! — Amy
The St. Al’s Carnival and the PAFCOM parade!
Busy day in Lincoln Park today! They’re hosting the St. Aloysius Carnival through Sunday, 11-8pm (near the fountain). Rides, games, food, and souvenirs, plus a place where grownups can cool off a bit and enjoy some beer and wine while their kids run around and have some fun. Cutting across the park today on my way home, I encountered a rousing karaoke version of “Sweet Caroline” and Friday night was concluded with Bon Jovi’s “Never Say Goodbye” which wafted through the neighborhood. A lovely event that raises money for a very nice parish on West Side Ave.
And, not to bury the lede or anything, the PAFCOM (Philippine American Friendship Committee) parade and festival is today, also in the park. This is a massive event, if you’ve never been — a really amazing parade at 11:30 (with lots of incredible costumes and outfits), followed by music and entertainment and lots and lots of booths til 6pm. Oh you want Filipino street food? They’ve got you covered and you will not leave hungry. They have loads of entertainers and there will be a lot going on.
On your way from the carnival to the festival, why not stop off at the Farmers Market (10-2pm)? Get some good, reasonably priced veggies, and if the Mexican baked good vendor is there I highly recommend her chocolate cakes and blue corn tortillas.
Don’t forget your sunscreen and some water, and enjoy!
Hudson County politics go sideways
Ok this has been a very long and confusing week in the world of NJ politics — from NJ Transit completely melting down to everything Norcross related to revelations in the Bob Menendez trial. I’m going to leave those up to you to find out about, but while all of that is happening, the Hudson County political establishment appears ready to absolutely destroy itself, and I’m going to try to flesh out a bit the history as to this beef, what on earth is going on, and why. This is gonna be tricky to do without writing a post so long your eyes start bleeding, but I’ll try.
Ok what happened?
There is a huge fight brewing over who the HCDO is going to endorse for governor, and things are headed in a way that seem especially messy and complicated.
From InsiderNJ:
JERSEY CITY, N.J. — Hudson County Assembly members Barbara McCann Stamato (D-31), John Allen (D-32), Jessica Ramirez (D-32) and Julio Marenco (D-33), along with Hudson County Sheriff Frank Schillari and Guttenberg Mayor Wayne Zitt, will all run for re-election next year with the same ballot slogan as Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop as he campaigns for the Democratic nomination for Governor. Fulop and the six Hudson County candidates have committed to running with the same slogan regardless of the Hudson County Democratic Organization’s endorsement.
The candidates’ announcement comes in the wake of newly-elected Hudson County Democratic Organization Chairman County Executive Craig Guy declining to honor the commitment made by his predecessor to endorse Fulop for Governor, citing concerns over Fulop’s support for ending the county line system and his endorsement of Andy Kim’s campaign for U.S. Senate.
The gist of this is that the previous chairman of the HCDO announced his intention to back Fulop for governor, but the new chairman Craig Guy (who is also the County Executive) has signaled that he may or may not give Fulop the highly coveted endorsement, and as a result, a bunch of incumbent Democratic candidates who are with the HCDO may be breaking from the organization when they run for re-election next year.
To be clear, all of this is over a race that doesn’t happen until 2025. In the meantime, we’ve got Biden vs Trump to deal with, a senate race, and a million issues that will need our local leaders to work together to find solutions, and not try to one up each other as part of some petty infighting1. But here we are, it’s gonna be a long slog to 2025, but this is what we have going on.
Let’s break this down.
What’s the HCDO?
Bear with me — a lot of people actually still don’t know this. The HCDO is the Hudson County Democratic Organization — they are “the machine” in this part of NJ. Almost every elected person in Jersey City is a part of the HCDO, with a few (very few) notable exceptions, like council members James Solomon and Frank Gilmore. Every election, a few unaffiliated candidates challenge HCDO candidates and mostly this doesn’t end great for the unaffiliated folks, given the resources the HCDO has available to them (for more on this, see below). Most candidates, unless they are philosophically opposed to the idea of accepting help from the Democratic machine, want the endorsement of the HCDO.
Where/when did this disagreement start?
Oh goodness. Again, this has been percolating for years, but let me try to oversimplify it: Brian Stack hates Steve Fulop and vice versa. The two of them have hated each other for years, occasionally peppered with times when they sort of got along, only to turn around and hate each other more later. It’s hard to say when exactly it started, and it’s likely that the real reasons aren’t known by the public.
There’s more to it than that. But this is a really, really big chunk of where this whole issue got started.
Why do Stack and Fulop hate each other?
Again, this is hard to say, and again, I’d bet the full reason isn’t public or anything we’ll really ever know the details of. That said, I’m extremely comfortable saying that a large part of it is this: they’re two wildly ambitious guys with short fuses who are used to getting their way, and that as one thwarts the other, the resentment and bad feelings have grown. This has been building for years, and once again, here we are.
Look, talk to Fulop stans and you’ll hear that Stack “hates progress.” Talk to Stack fans, and you’ll hear that Fulop is “an ambitious climber who doesn’t have JC’s best interests at heart.” (Ok, I put those in quotes to make it clear that’s not coming from me but from things I’ve heard, but it’s fair to point out those are paraphrases.) What’s the answer? None of us knows why these two hate each other so much. There’s a million different theories floating around and I’m here to say that none of them matter. Whatever started this thing, it has now morphed and metastasized into something else, and it almost doesn’t even matter whatever kicked it off. We’re here now.
Ok, so what happens now?
In the short term, lots of yelling. Beyond that, we don’t really know, because we’ve never quite been here before. Craig Guy is undoubtably under tremendous pressure to keep the entire organization together at all costs and to make everyone get along. He is almost certainly fielding screaming phone calls every two seconds and questioning all of his life decisions up to this point. Eventually, one side will win, and probably things will get really nasty for a while; then the other side will likely retaliate. Rinse and repeat til we all die, or until one side soundly defeats the other (I guess).
Important to keep in mind that anything that threatens the solidity of the HCDO threatens the entire reason for it to exist. The HCDO (and the other county machines) are powerful because they all move together in unison. If you have 10% of the party getting distracted and tuning out and another 20% having doubts about where they’re headed — it doesn’t work. It is, after all, a machine, and for a machine to work, all the little cogs and gears have to be working in sync.
Hey wait, I thought we got rid of The Line? Why are we even having this fight?
We did, for now at least, but the party organizations still exist and still matter. You see mention about things like slogans in the InsiderNJ post, but the truth is the HCDO brings a ton more to the table than just what words run under a candidate’s name on a ballot.
If you’ve ever watched a campaign where overnight big, full color posters appear on every lamppost, volunteers flood your area and put “door knocker” flyers up on every house on your street, and on Election Day there’s people standing nearish to the polling place with big signs — all that manpower is from the HCDO. Start mixing up slogans and messages and suddenly things start running less in sync. What’s more, an endorsement from the HCDO signals to all those city and county workers I talked about in the last issue which candidate their bosses think they should vote for. The endorsement carries incredible weight overall, even if the physical line on the ballot is now gone.
Fulop’s threat of the possibility of several incumbent candidates potentially running for re-election with different slogans than the other HCDO candidates threatens to upend this process and speaks to the role The Line played. None of the people he mentioned are up-and-coming candidates; they’re all people who can really help get out their own vote, and so they have something to bring to the table in terms of leverage over this issue. If someone like Barbara McCann Stamato (for instance, or you could use any of the others as well) drives a ton of voters to the polls to vote for her, and in the booth those voters are looking for other people to support as well, it might confusing to them to know who is aligned with her and who is not if all their slogans are different. Maybe they’ll skip the other spots, maybe they’ll vote for the “wrong” person (from the HCDO’s POV). Who knows. Basically, to an organization like the HCDO, which counts on easily winning elections and keeping the status quo the status quo, this could be seen as threatening. In the past they had The Line to keep all their candidates literally in a row; now they do not.
Now, one thing to keep in mind: none of the candidates Fulop has signed up to this plan have been picked because they do a great job, or because they represent a constituency that isn’t being represented elsewhere, or their politics are perfectly in line with his, or anything like that. This isn’t about issues or job performance or anything else merit based — it’s simply about lining up candidates with name recognition who can turn out their own voters and using that as leverage to win this latest round. Please don’t get any ideas that the people he’s aligning himself with are somehow more honest or more “progressive” or anything like that then their peers. I mean, they might be, they might not be — but that’s not why they’re a part of this. This is strictly about picking a side and digging in, and being either with someone or against them. It’s politics, baby.
Ok, how does this affect Jersey City specifically?
Well, for now, I’m just going to focus on the mayor’s race, which is also in the mix here. (Also, more about the mayor’s race apart from the role of the HCDO in the post below this.)
Stack is supporting Jim McGreevey for mayor. From an article on NJ.com:
While insiders disagree over the reason Stack is backing McGreevey, three at least see it as a “f--- you” to Fulop, who fired McGreevey in 2019 from the Jersey City Employment and Training Program, a now-closed nonprofit that had provided job training and prisoner re-entry services.
“Brian Stack has never stuck his nose into a Jersey City election in his life, then all of a sudden two and a half years before the election who the mayor should be,” an insider said. “There is no good blood between those guys.”
Fulop has not made his pick for mayor known, but he has made it very clear that he doesn’t like McGreevey and that McGreevey is not in the mix for his endorsement. You’d think Fulop would pick Joyce Watterman, since she has been part of his slate for the last ten years, voted pretty much lockstep with everything he’s pushed, and has picked up his developer buddies as funders2, but he hasn’t done that for whatever reason. It sort of makes sense to me that he’s staying out of it for now, given how early it is, but then he’s also freaking out over the HCDO potentially not endorsing him for a race that will happen at the same time in 2025, so I’m sort of amused that he’s taking his time with this meanwhile he’s demanding the HCDO endorse him right now.
And so, with all that said, who will the HCDO support for JC mayor? I’d imagine — and of course, I’m just sort of guessing here because we’re in unknown territory — that however this HCDO situation about the governor’s endorsement plays out will directly trickle over to the mayor’s race. Meaning, whoever loses that round is going to dig in their heels and fight like hell to win this one.
Initially, Stack seemed to had the organization lined up to support McGreevey. However, things have shifted a bit — before this latest Fulop situation even happened, there were already rumblings that HCDO members wanted to switch to support O’Dea (culminating in this recent O’Dea fundraiser). If they were to switch to support O’Dea, I think Stack might actually physically explode — like literally burst into flames — and then what happens is anyone’s guess. That’s not necessarily Stack being anti-O’Dea personally, but if Stack loses both his picks for the governor’s endorsement and also the mayor’s endorsement while also being probably the single most high profile HCDO GOTV figure, that’s not gonna go well.
One more thing I’ll put into this mix: the Jersey City branch of the HCDO isn’t nearly as powerful right now as the northern Hudson branch of the HCDO. We saw this recently with Ravi Bhalla vs HCDO supported Rob Menendez and their race for congress. Union City and North Bergen poured people to the polls in support of Menendez. Bhalla won JC, but he was helped in part by an anemic GOTV game by the Jersey City HCDO folks. And as mentioned earlier, we do have two non-HCDO people on the city council (proving you can win without the machine’s support), and both of them have their own networks and have been very successful and driving people to vote. So while the endorsement of the HCDO will be important in the JC mayor’s race, it’s definitely not an absolute slam dunk for any candidate. (Fulop himself won his first term without HCDO help, although he later ran with them for his next two terms.)
Meanwhile, I would imagine any candidate for JC mayor wants to stay the hell out of this situation as much as possible, at least for now.
Wait, who am I rooting for here?
I mean, hard to say. I’ve been harshly critical of Fulop since about his first year in office, and meanwhile I’ve long admired what Stack has been able to do in Union City, including spotless streets, low crime, and strict enforcement of renters rights. If this were a choice between which was the better mayor, I’d say Stack in a heartbeat.
On the issue of who to endorse, however, I think it would be really ridiculous if the HCDO endorsed another candidate for governor other than Fulop. It gives me no joy to say that as I don’t think he would be good at the job, but if you’re strictly looking at this from the point of view of which candidate understands the needs of our area better than the other, I mean clearly that’s the guy who’s been mayor for the last ten years would over another person who is presumably out of the area. If the role of the HCDO is to represent voters here — which is what the role should be — it makes the most sense that they’d back Fulop, who at least knows the terrain. Again, I’m not thrilled by any of this, but it just makes the most sense.
But when it comes to this whole situation, I say let them fight. Fulop and Gottheimer (likely the person the HCDO would choose over Fulop for governor) are both pretty awful candidates, but if we can drive a stake into the back of the HCDO along the way to picking a terrible person to vote for for governor, I’m all for it. If these guys want to destroy the entire machine because they’re unable to get along, who am I to stop them?
Mayoral race recap
I’ve been staying away from writing too much about this race because it is so far away, but things are at least sort of happening so let’s go.
McGreevey walking tour
This week, Jim McGreevey blasted out an invitation via text to a walking tour he’ll be doing:
A more detailed version of the map, including specific streets he’ll be walking on, is available here — it looks like maybe this was also a mailer, but I have not received one so far. Anyway, the point is, he’s going to be walking through Jersey City and talking to different residents, hearing their concerns, and seeing the city. This is apparently a return to something he did on his campaign for governor 20+ years ago, where he walked from the northernmost part of the state to the southernmost part. At that time, he was followed each step along the way by the NJ press who intently covered the trek. I doubt there’ll be much coverage of it this time — the Jersey Journal seems pretty overwhelmed in general, Hudson County View is a small operation that can’t dedicate a reporter three days a week just to this story. My prediction is that if anyone really covers it, it’ll be me or Tris McCall from the Jersey City Times and really I do not have the attention span or love for summer weather to commit all that much to this particular project (so basically I’m saying: this is all you, Tris). I think if Tris would like to go all Hunter S. Thompson on this story and manically follow Jim through the whole city that might be amusing, but I also wouldn’t think any less of the guy if he just skipped it.
My takeaway is basically, this is fine. Jersey City is a lovely city to walk through, and it’s interesting to go around and talk to people and that sounds like fun. I’m not 100% how this is going to work (like, is he walking alone? how far is he walking each day?) but again, I don’t think this is anything to get too excited about as either drumming up massive support for him or turning off voters in droves. If anything, I think it’s probably most useful for the candidate to actually go and see the whole city and meet people — potentially way more useful for him than for the voters he connects with who, presumably, will only have a few minutes to spend with the candidate, although it doesn’t hurt that voters get to mix with him as well.
Again, nothing wrong with that. In the end I’d say this is a semi-interesting idea that will only be made more or less interesting depending on who he runs into on the way and how all this unfolds. I guess we’ll see.
Joyce Watterman announcement
This week, City Council President and Pastor of of Continuous Flow Christian Center, Joyce Watterman “officially” announced her intention to run for mayor, which is something she made clear months ago but now it’s official, I guess. I’ve made no secret that out of all four declared candidates, she is the one I am the least enthused over — in fact, I think it’s fair to say I’m pretty staunchly against her ever becoming mayor. As a member of Fulop’s city council slate, she has voted lockstep for practically every single initiative his office has pushed; she has sponsored few if any resolutions or ordinances during her entire tenure; and she famously went so far as to film an ad paid for by “development powerhouse” LeFrak, disavowing any responsibility to our rising property taxes and blaming the whole thing on the schools (now mysteriously stricken from the web). These are not traits I want to see in our future mayor.
So, I was deeply disappointed to see Lewis Spears added to her slate, as part of her announcement. Spears ran for mayor last round, and I was a volunteer on his campaign for many months. My whole reason for volunteering back then was because Spears represented the opposite of Fulop’s agenda. To see him now aligned with someone who has seemingly never pushed back even the tiniest bit to that same agenda and is herself aligned with the same forces that ushered Fulop into office is frustrating. But, politics are politics. I wish Lewis well.
Also:
Waterman also revealed four members of her slate who will run for city council: Alexander Hamilton, a former school board member; David Carment, a pastor and community leader from the city’s Greenville section; Kenny Reyes, who has lost races for city council and school board[.]
Bill O’Dea/Mussab Ali
I haven’t seen too much in terms of interesting campaign events happen with either O’Dea or Ali in the last couple of weeks, although they did work together on this (which is kind of fascinating that they’d come together to work on something while also running against each other) and O’Dea did have the fundraiser I previously mentioned. It’s early, it’s 100 degrees; I’m guessing both are pacing themselves.
Feral cats of the week
I accidentally skipped this segment a few weeks in a row, but don’t worry. I got you. Here are many, many feral cats to make up for my mistake:
I count six… there might be a seventh one, too. And the best part is, they’re all black and white cats, like my beloved cat-child Oswald was, many years ago. I absolutely squealed with delight when I cam across this scene, and don’t miss the dapper fellow in the tuxedo on the porch to your left.
ICYMI
Former JCBOE President Sudhan Thomas was finally sentenced for embezzlement.
Here’s where I get incredibly frustrated at Fulop accusing Murphy of cutting funding to his most favored project, the JC Pompidou. We don’t know that’s exactly how it all went down, but say it did in fact get canceled because Fulop switched his senate endorsement from Tammy Murphy to Andy Kim, enraging Phil Murphy, who retaliated by cutting funding. Ok, we’ve now seen what happens when we piss off the statewide establishment — we get retaliated against. So, knowing that, now Fulop is picking a fight with the entire county establishment? What’s the retaliation to that gonna be?
I 100% get that this is not how politics should be. Money should be awarded based on the merits of the project, and not on whether or not a politician likes another politician. But also, can we all please exist in reality? That’s how the world works. Politics are political — they’re based on relationships and glad handling and so forth. We all know this. So maybe Fulop picking a fight on a topic that really only benefits him personally but might trickle down to affecting all of us negatively isn’t the best idea in the world? Or maybe at least attempt to resolve all of this in private rather than immediately blasting your email list and escalating it? I don’t know.
A point for another time, but I’ve been meaning to say it: I don’t think accepting developer money is disqualifying for a candidate. I do, however, think accepting a lot of developer money — especially money from developers who have been repeated problems in the city — is an issue.
The reason why I’m a little soft on the idea of accepting any developer money is that there is very little money locally to go to campaigns, period. When you look at candidates who have pledged to run in JC with zero developer money, one of two things happens: either they raise almost zero money and can’t compete, or they raise money from people outside of JC. Neither of those are great options.
I sometimes worry that by insisting that candidates not take any developer/real estate money, if we make things too difficult for non-HCDO-affiliated candidates and create a kind of purity test that is difficult for those candidates to pass (meanwhile the HCDO-affiliated candidates get to suck up all the developer money and also have support from the machine, and the non-affiliated candidates are just stuck). Also, developers do have a stake in JC, and we’re not stopping all development anytime soon, nor should we. We definitely don’t want to elect people who just do what developers tell them and are totally beholden to them, but the idea that any and all real estate money is toxic — I just don’t think that’s realistic to expect of a candidate in JC right now.
Anyway, more on this another time.