Issue 199: The Assembly race
Also: art events, a post about the JCBOE, and more! (Sorry, still no cats. I swear they're coming back.)
Good morning! Here, at long last, is the Assembly post for you. I hope you have a great Sunday and as always, thank you for reading! — Amy
Reminder!
Two art events you might want to consider for next week…
Art History is For Everyone is the event I’m doing with JC Eats, where you get to come to the back of a West Side bar and hear me talk about 20th/21st century art history movements while we eat light bites inspired by the styles of art we’ll be talking about. Why simply contemplate Robert Smithson’s 1970 masterpiece Spiral Jetty when you can eat a snack prepared by one of Jersey City’s best chefs inspired by the piece (and this is just one example — we’ll have five specially prepared snacks for you!)? Tickets are only $10 and we have ten nine left, so please — if you want to come, order one soon. It’s on Friday, May 16th from 6:30pm-8:30pm.
Mana Open Studio (888 Newark Ave) is next Sunday, May 18, from 12-6. There will be tons of events happening all at once, including (and please forgive me for dropping info from press releases here but this is probably the best way to describe what’s going on):
On view throughout the day: Discover the iconic style of Peggy Moffitt in The Peggy Moffitt Collection, a tribute to the legendary 1960s muse and model of avant-garde designer Rudi Gernreich. Known for her dramatic look and fearless fashion, Moffitt preserved over 300 of Gernreich’s groundbreaking pieces, many made uniquely for her. Now released from her private collection, this auction offers a rare chance to own wearable works of fashion history. (Link)
Artist’s talk, 2-3pm: Through mixed media, Danielle [Scott] explores the enduring echoes of the Atlantic Slave Trade, tracing ancestral stories and confronting intergenerational trauma with raw, emotional depth. (Link, including info on making a free reservation.)
Plus, free music, and food trucks! And lots and lots of open studios!
Also, this will be my last Open Studio event at Mana, so if you’d like to come by and say hi (studio B93), now’s your chance!
The Assembly race
Onto a much-requested entry about the Assembly race! This is going to be a very long one, as the feedback and questions that I’ve gotten from readers have been pretty basic and need to be really explained. I’m going to try to break this up into sections so you can skip things that you already know.
Also this is incredibly long and I am really sorry about that. But it took me that long to really dig in and address everything fully (now you see why I waited til finals were over!). No one expects you to read this whole thing, certainly not me. But hopefully it’s broken up enough that you can find what you need.
Anyway, I’m really excited because I get to start this whole thing with my most frequently asked question of ALL TIME:
Do we have to vote for an entire slate?
No no no no no no no. No. Not at all. That’s in the case of this election, the case with the mayoral/council election, and all other local elections. You do not have to vote for an entire slate, ever. I think in the ongoing discussion of “the machine” vs everything else, people got a little confused by this.
In the election for Assembly, you get to vote for two people. You can vote for one from one slate, and another from another slate. You could vote for one on one slate and write in a second candidate. You can also just vote for one person and leave the second alone, if you really wanted to. Slates are there to guide you and show you who is running together and sharing resources. But you, as a voter, are in no way confined by them. You can ignore them completely, and I encourage you to (or rather, I encourage you to sort of note them, and then look at the candidates individually, and take their slate participation as just another point of information about them. It gives you some information about them, but only some).
What is the Assembly?
The easiest way I can explain it is this: the Assembly is to the state of NJ what the US Congress is to the federal government. Think of assembly members as local congressmen, if that makes sense. But what I mean is, members of the Assembly do three specific things (and those things tend to be similar to what our congressional representatives do, only at a different scale): 1. They vote on bills that can become law in the state; 2. They help direct state funds for schools and roads and projects that the communities they represent want; 3. They offer constituent services to their district.
Could MAGA Republicans win in our area?
In Hudson County, Democrats always win. Now, I understand, this is very presumptuous of me to say that chances are, our local Assembly members are most likely to be Democrats rather than Republicans months before the final election, but while the number of local Republicans has been creeping up in recent years, registered Democrats are still in a wide majority.
So in evaluating the candidates, you don’t really need to worry about big basic Democratic Party issues. It’s a big tent, to be sure, but anyone running as a Democrat in Hudson County is going to support abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, and other large, broad strokes of the “culture wars” like that. (You could argue that how fiercely they will fight for those rights will differ from candidate to candidate, and you’d be right. However, if it’s part of the overall Democratic Party platform, you can expect that the Democratic Assembly candidates running will support it.)
What is the deal with these slates?
Before I get into individual candidates, let me talk a little about the slates. Again, there seems to be a ton of confusion around this.
First, there is the Hudson County Democratic Organization (HCDO). When you hear people in NJ talk about “the machine,” this is the kind of organization they are referring to. It’s a group of county-wide Democrats who organize together and historically have massively turned out votes for their candidates. There are versions of “the machine” in every county in the state. And historically, who they have nominated for a position has won, because they have the fundraising and manpower to make that happen and to move people to the polls.
The HCDO candidates tend to be a bit more moderate than many NYC-metro-area Democrats might fancy themselves to be (erm, at least the people I personally hang out with). They’re definitely still Democrats, but they’re just a little more of the centrist part of the party. An AOC-type candidate would probably not flourish there; Medicare for All — probably not their jam. But your usual rank and file Democratic issues — union labor, support for public schools, abortion/LGBTQ rights — they’re fine.
In most election cycles it would be the HCDO vs. Anybody Else If Even Anyone Else Shows Up To Run Against Them. In fact, in a quick review of a few of the Assembly elections in recent years, only the HCDO folks ran. That should give you a sense of what a hold the HCDO had on local elections for many years — for a very long time, they were the only game in town.
This is where recent history comes into play.
Steve Fulop, starting when he was a councilman, ran without the support of the HCDO — a risky thing to do. He won his first few elections without them, and then joined forces with them after his first term as mayor of JC. For a while, Fulop and the HCDO working together dominated Jersey City politics.
Then, more recently, he broke from them again. And in his campaign for governor, Fulop is styling himself as someone who “stood up to the machine” almost as if he never was an active part of them, at least in the years they were working together. But statewide, he has positioned himself as an outsider, and, in running for governor, is facing a potential problem.
Should he win, he will have to work with the state Assembly and Senate to get anything done. Want to fix NJ Transit? He’s gonna need Assembly and Senate votes. Want to build more housing? Gonna need those votes. The Governor is not in a situation where he simply waves a magic wand and does whatever he wants to do; there are checks and balances, and part of that is working with these bodies. Fulop is used to being mayor while he has a majority on the city council and they just vote however he tells them. But stepping into the role of governor, he’d face something different.
Now, if he were a rank-and-file HCDO guy, chances are that would help smooth the way for him to work with other politicians who were elected as part of their own county parties (and that would be the overwhelming majority of them). Had he come up through the primary winning endorsements from the different county parties, he would have shown himself to be a team player and as such, could expect some support from the other county teams. But because he’s not, it’s very possible that he would enter the position of governor having his own party not like him very much, and potentially — we don’t know how much — not want to work with him, even though he’s a fellow Democrat.
This sucks; everything about it sucks. I’m not going to be so blinded by my dislike of Fulop to not acknowledge that this is a terrible system.
Meanwhile, someone who was running for governor with the true intention of really opening up NJ Democratic politics to new voices might do a number of different things. They might embark on a multi-year project of voter education, do some massive voter drives, and encourage financing rules changes so that more individuals could successfully run. They could set up all sorts of resources to encourage underrepresented people to run and give them the training they need to actually do that. Imagine a truly democratic NJ, where anyone who genuinely felt called to serve their community could stand a chance of running and winning. That would be a game changer, and would be a very noble thing to champion.
That’s not really what’s happened here. Instead, what Fulop has done is create his own slates. Essentially replicating the power structure of the county parties, he now is running candidates throughout the state on his own slates, funded by his PACs, with the implicit understanding that if he’s elected and they’re elected, they’ll all vote together. To my mind: this sucks too. I understand it solves the problem for Fulop, personally, but it doesn’t really do much for the rest of us. It’s essentially replacing an old system that didn’t work and actively excluded people with a new round of people and the same exact potential problems. Why anyone thinks this is better is completely beyond me.
In this particular election, in District 32 you have the Fulop slate (Yousef Saleh, Jessica Ramirez) vs the HCDO slate (Jennie Pu, Crystal Fonseca) vs the “independent” slate (Katie Brennan, Ravi Bhalla) and in District 31 it’s strictly the Fulop slate (Barbara McCann Statmato, Jackie Weimmer) vs the HCDO slate (William Sampson, Jerry Walker).
Who I would vote for personally
In District 32, my first vote would go to Katie Brennan. Brennan has the education and work experience working for different facets of the government that I think would prepare her well for this position. She’s a first time candidate, but she’s worked in government and been involved locally for years (personally I’d just recommend looking at her LinkedIn which shows off her impressive resume of working in the field of housing and economic development — and I really wish more candidates had a LinkedIn, because it just answers a lot of questions really easily). She is running as an independent, unaffiliated with either Fulop or the HCDO’s slates. In fact, she’s never been associated formally with any of those slates, so if independence is important to you, it’s hard to think of a better person to give your vote to1.
My second vote — well, here things get a bit hazy. But let me point out two candidates I think are pretty decent for different reasons. For these, I’m going to just put aside their affiliation with the other slates, and look at the candidates as individuals. I kind of have to do this, since there’s a small pool of candidates.
Jessica Ramirez (Fulop’s slate) has the experience of having already served one term. She has been, as far as I can tell, a reasonably good Assembly member, and I think she’d continue into a second term doing the same. If you’re looking for someone who is ready to go on day one (which is not a small thing at all), my sense is she’s a great person for you to consider.
Jennie Pu (HCDO slate) is the director of Hoboken Public Library (and has had deep involvement with libraries in many capacities over years). This is her first campaign, but librarians provide so many key public services in communities that I don’t want to just hand-wave that experience away. We’re at a point now where a low income person desperate for a new job or a place to live will lean on a library to access information, and young women with limited means will go to the library for period products; librarians have to juggle administering basic social services along with helping kids with their homework and other people to do research — it’s a lot, and I respect the profession deeply. On top of that, Pu personally gave a polished interview to Hudson County View Live, and she seems to genuinely be a smart and compassionate candidate. I don’t think this is going to be her campaign to win, but I would love to see her give it another try — and maybe she’s someone worthy of your vote.
Over in District 31, there are no independents. If you wanted to “drain the swamp” or “abolish the machine,” I have bad news for you and this race. It’s purely the HCDO slate vs Fulop slate, so if you don’t like either — and I feel your pain because I’m in the same boat — you just have to try your best.
I guess for my first pick I’d choose Barbara McCann Stamato (Fulop slate) — hard to picture someone who is more of a Hudson County political insider than she is (so amusing to me that she’s running on Fulop’s ticket) but to be fair, insiders and people who really understand and have deep connections to the existing system are good at getting stuff done when they want to. She also is the incumbent, so there’s directly relevant experience she can count on, along with her lifetime of other political involvement. I’m not enthusiastic about this vote, but I am trying to be pragmatic. She is highly qualified for the job and should be able to deliver for her district, no question.
I’m just going to put out there that I will never vote for Jerry Walker (HCDO) for anything, ever, due to his connection to the proposed privatization of Liberty State Park. I don’t feel strongly about the remaining two candidates, but out of them, Will Sampson (HCDO) is the incumbent so he has the experience to continue in the job, and he’s done an ok job so far. So I’m thinking he will be my second vote. I guess.
Ok, but what about the issues?
Want to know where they stand on the issues?2 It’s a little tough to answer that. Again, all the candidates running are Democrats, and they can all be expected to be strong on the basics of the party platform. There have been and will be no debates in these campaigns and few events where you can meet everyone all at once, so when it comes to fighting it out on ultra-local issues, it’s hard to say where they’d fall.
(There is one event coming up that I’m aware of where you can see several candidates at one time is a candidate forum being hosted by Safe Streets JC, I Love Greenville, and the local library, and it’s for District 31 only. All candidates who qualified for the ballot have been invited; it’s unclear how many will show. It’s on Monday, May 12, from 5:30pm-8pm at the Glenn Cunningham branch of the library. Go here for free tickets and more info. (There was an event for District 32, but unfortunately I didn’t know about it til now and it passed a couple of weeks ago. I tried to find video of that event and can’t find any; here is an article on it.)
For the most part, as far as I can tell, the candidates are roughly the same on most issues. The only major local issue of note that I’ve noticed any difference on is the turnpike expansion — it doesn’t look like the HCDO candidates have made a statement on this, whereas the others have come out against it. (I hope I’m not misstating this — as with everything else in this post, I tried to be really fair and figure out where everyone stands on it, and there’s just a lack of information available, unfortunately. But I searched and searched and didn’t see the HCDO candidates comment on this issue either way.)
That’s where figuring out where everyone stands gets tricky. Many of you have requested (in this election and others) a “cheat sheet” of issues and a simple “yes/no” of where everyone stands on it. I’ve not wanted to do that for many reasons, one simple one being that sometimes issues have nuance, and another being that people can be persuaded to change. But yet another is, a trend we’ve been seeing recently is that candidates tend to simply not have statements on controversial issues. Are they for this issue, or against it, or did their web developer just not get around to updating that part of their website yet? Rather than committing to yes/no opinions, a lot of candidates simply don’t comment on them at all. So, in the end, where do they fall? Hard to say.
To that end, here’s what you can do:
Look at the websites of the candidates (I’ll list them below). For those that even have policy noted on their sites (not all of them do!) it sounds like they’re pretty much all in agreement — we need more affordability, we need to fight back against Trump — but keep an extra sharp eye out to see if they even mention the issues you personally really care about. Since this is an especially tight campaign, I encourage you to email the campaigns/candidates directly if you don’t see your issues addressed to get clarity on where the candidate stands. I know that’s extra work for you, but if you want to be an informed voter and there’s an issue that’s super important to you, it’s worth it.
District 31:
William Sampson — I can’t find a campaign site, but here’s his official page at the Assembly;
Jerry Walker — his website www.jerrywalkernj.com doesn’t work; his Facebook page hasn’t been updated since he stopped running for Congress; I hate to link to an IG page because it doesn’t offer much in the way of policy positions but I guess I have no other choice.
District 32:
In you’re in District 31, there is that aforementioned candidate forum that you can attend as well.
Other than that, it’s incredibly hard to parse the difference between the candidates. I’m sure some candidate will read this and email me screaming that back in 1985 one of their opponents did a thing that we should all be paying attention to and, I’m sorry. I’ve spent a lot of time looking into this. On about 98% of the issues, these candidates are the same.
Voter turnout
Also, have I mentioned that Hudson County has an abysmal record of showing up to the polls for Assembly races? If you’ve made it this far in the post, you might have a clear idea why that is. Sure, in the past, they’ve mostly run unopposed so that certainly could be part of it. But even now, our early voting numbers are in the toilet. Like genuinely, they are deeply pathetic. I mean yeah, Hudson County still mostly votes in person, but those numbers are all the same ridiculously bad.
I always feel a kind of strange emptiness inside whenever I sit down and reflect on how an election — with its millions of pieces of mail, bands of volunteers, countless phone calls and polls — somehow comes down to just a tiny fraction of the population voting. I’ve long wanted to try and figure out what the cost-per-vote in these elections is, but maybe even better would be to try to map the environmental-destruction-per-vote or emotional-exhaustion-per-vote. (Erm, if you have any idea how to do that, just let me know.)
But, this means that your vote means more than ever. With only about 10% of the voting public expected to turn up to vote in this election, candidates are absolutely desperate for your vote. Voting is easy and free, and I can pretty much guarantee you that you will not have to wait on line to vote in this election. I understand the system is far from perfect but please, if you are able, vote for someone this election. The only way things are ever going to start getting better is if voters start showing up to participate.
ICYMI
Brigid D’Souza aka CivicParent has a new post up that actually explains what is happening with the JCBOE and their new budget — including, an actual, concrete answer about the tax levy and how much it’s going up by. It’s incredibly helpful — you’ll be prompted to make a free account, but once you do so you’ll be able to access the article, along with infographics she’s made breaking everything down. She will have more for us in subsequent posts, but this helps explain things way more than any other resource I’ve seen available online.
Unless you’re completely going no-contact with social media and the news in general, you probably know by now that on Friday, Newark mayor/candidate for NJ governor Ras Baraka was arrested while protesting an ICE facility, and that the Department of Homeland Security is currently threatening to arrest three congress members, including LaMonica McIver and Rob Menendez, who represent our area and were present at the protest. It’s nuts. I’m really glad they were all out there and speaking up about this facility; I’m a little scared to see what next week brings.
I’m not impressed by her running mate, Ravi Bhalla, and personally would never consider voting for him. I’ve discussed him in the past and given how long this is, I don’t want to spend too much time digging into why, but basically — I am not impressed by what he’s done as mayor of Hoboken, nor do I feel he has a sincere commitment to social justice (or at least the issues I personally care about).
From an organizational standpoint, I know — this section of the post should have been earlier. But given there’s incredibly little I can say on the difference between the candidates in terms of issues, I stand by it.
Hi Amy! Thought you might find it interesting that the Heights is covered in O'Dea signs right now. Besides the constant McGreevy mailers, nothing up in this area from the other candidates.