Issue 2: Memorial Day edition
County Committee election, park funding, art stuff, and two great sandwiches!
Hello friends! This is issue two, and I’m just continuing to play around with formats here. So what we’ve got this week is a mix of politics, policy, food recommendations, and other assorted stuff. Any thoughts/feedback you have on format and what works/doesn’t work, let me know… I’m making this up as I go. — Amy
June 8th Election
There’s an election on June 8th!! Chances are, if you live in most parts of JC, you probably haven’t heard much about it. It’s all a little bit confusing: the race for Mayor and City Council isn’t until November; the race in June is the primary for Governor, State Senator, and Assembly, all of which are uncontested if you’re voting Democrat. You also get to vote for your County Committee member, but in most parts of JC this will mean also voting in an uncontested election. (Don’t worry — while this election has been pretty dull, you will for sure hear a lot about the November one.)
That’s in most parts of the city. There are a few sections of JC that have contests going on for County Committee, and that’s what I’m going to break down for you below.
First up, what on earth is a County Committee Member?
Basically, it's the lowest level elected official in the county. It’s a VERY part-time (think, an hour or two a month if that), unpaid position. Each district — an area of a few blocks — gets two representatives1. There are 900 of them through all of Hudson County, 444 of them in Jersey City, which is quite a lot.
The County Committee is all about the local Democratic Party, the Hudson County Democratic Organization (HCDO). The Committee members are the ones who get out the vote for the party’s chosen candidates on Election Day. They also get to vote for who the leadership of the party is, which is important because it’s the leadership of the HCDO who get to decide the County line.2 It’s also a position that serves as a potential audition for higher office; think of it as a good way to make an impression on the people you’d have to impress if you ever wanted the party’s support to run for City Council or whatever.
As a whole, the HCDO tends to be sort of moderate/centrist Democrat, as much as these things come into play with local politics, which isn’t as much as you might think if you primarily follow national politics. Remember, this is local politics — things like abortion policy or the Green New Deal aren’t going to get voted on. There are occasionally larger issues in play — see, the ICE contract at the Kearny jail — as they coincide with local ones. But most of the time, local politics revolve around things like bike lanes vs parking, more housing vs. neighborhood preservation — the kind of issues that are hard to map along a simple left/right structure.
Ok remember: there’s 444 of them in JC, 900 in all of Hudson County. Out of that number, there’s a small percentage (about 5%3 in Jersey City, I’d guess, although my math skills suck) that weren’t handpicked to run for the position by HCDO leadership and are challenging the candidates that were. So that means that even if all of them win (which, that’s probably not possible), very little is going to change in the HCDO anytime soon. Even if all of them were elected at once and came in laser-focused with perfect precision, they still wouldn’t be able to get very much done because the numbers are stacked against them.
Does this mean that this race is totally futile? No, of course not. If you believe the HCDO should be tilted left (or be more “progressive” or “inclusive” or whatever sort of word you want to use to describe it), this could be the first step in trying to do that. If I sound not too excited about the prospects of this, it’s because I personally have very mixed feelings about working within the system vs outside of it. I’m also just trying to be very realistic here about what the position actually is and what its limitations are. I respect candidates who want to run for office with the good intentions of improving life for everyone. I’m just a little frustrated and burned out when it comes to working within the existing systems right now.
Meanwhile, Jersey City takes its elections deathly seriously, people get very emotionally invested, and — in a race where the election can literally come down to one or two votes given how small the area is — candidates are vying for handfuls of votes in their very own backyard. It’s quite honestly a mess and can get nasty. (If your neighborhood doesn’t have a County Committee race raging, don’t worry — the next school board election is practically around the corner and you can see it all on display then.) So it’s not unlikely we’re going to see a bunch of people who live in the same neighborhood engaged in what seems like bloodsport over a position where the prize is to get to cast one out of 900 votes.
So ok who the hell is running?
Most people reading this will go to the polls to find their Committee members to be unchallenged; that’s the case in my district. But if you have a choice of who to vote for, one candidate will be with the HCDO and chances are the other candidate is affiliated with either the Progressive Democrats of Hudson County or the Hudson County Progressive Alliance. I’ll just be super honest and say I haven’t dug in deep to learn too much about the candidates running since my district isn’t in play and I can’t vote for any of them. But the links above will send you to their pages where they have the list of people running for this position so you can check and see if your district is. And if you have no idea what district you’re in, this map could help.
I can’t find a link to a “meet the candidates” type page sponsored for the HCDO for this position, but if I’ve missed it, I will certainly publish it in the next newsletter. I honestly wouldn’t find it that surprising that they don’t have anything like that together, given the sheer number of people running. But, let me know.
Jersey City: Lots of parks; not too much money committed to maintain them
To my mind, the best thing to come out of JC election season is that it gets people paying attention to local issues in a way they might tune out otherwise. In this vein, County Committee candidate Mary Beth Botts caught my attention when she tweeted an article titled The Inequality of American Parks from Bloomberg News. From there, I was led to the Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit group that measures access and funding for parks, and to their assessment of Jersey City.
Good news, everybody!! Jersey City is at the top of the stack of parks nationwide in terms of accessibility. According to this group, 94% of residents live within a 10 minute walk of a park. This tracks; there’s been a ton of so-called “pocket parks” opened within the last few years, and it makes sense that they are within walking distance of most residents. This is way above the national average.
Hooray!
Also, bad news, everybody!! Jersey City lags way way way behind other cities when it comes to actually maintaining the parks that it has. It’s great at having parks, not so great at keeping them clean, the amenities working and up-to-date, and so forth. In this regard, we fall way below such glistening metropolitan centers as Chula Vista, Fresno, Hialeah, and Lubbock, and are among the “bottom 10 spenders.” San Fransisco spends $357/per resident on its parks; JC spends about 1/10th of that.
This is kind of weird because there was a referendum before voters in 2016 that passed overwhelmingly, that added a tax to help fund our parks and open spaces. It looks like the Mayor then asked for this tax to be suspended during 2020 to deal with the pandemic (this didn’t happen, for reasons that are unclear). Personally, that seems like a strange thing to ask for given how much people needed outdoor areas during that time, but what do I know. Also, we weren’t the only city to face a budget crunch due to the pandemic, and it looks like everyone’s felt the crunch:
So ok. Let’s blame the pandemic for the super low score, and go ahead and bump JC up a few notches on the list — sure, why not? That’s still not… great? And a walk through the parks of Greenville and Ward F really show the neglect that’s happening there. I guess I just didn’t realize how little we were spending towards them til now.
Cheap eats
I was going to stay away from food recommendations because JC Eats does such a fantastic job at covering the food scene here, and I wondered if there was really a need. That said, a lot of our local places are really struggling post pandemic, and I want to support them however I can. So here’s some highlights from some teeny-tiny businesses in JC, that you should definitely check out.
Egg and cheese sandwich at Taqueria Gloria, 117 Tonnelle Avenue
Look, there’s some place downtown where you have to line up and wait for an hour while they make you a $14 egg and cheese sandwich or something — I don’t really know the details, nor do I care. To me, an egg and cheese sandwich is really one thing: two eggs, cooked but soft, on a cheap round roll (the kind you can buy at CTown and comes in that big plastic bin with the tongs attached by a string) with American cheese, salt and pepper. That’s it. It sits in your stomach like a rock and, eaten late enough in the morning, can serve as both breakfast and lunch provided you have a small snack around 4-ish.
It’s really hard to find a version of this in JC. Our greasy spoons are a dying breed (RIP Papa’s Diner on Bergen Ave, one of my favorite spots in the city, lost to the pandemic). Most of the delis in town don’t seem to get the whole egg and cheese thing; they skimp on the cheese or the eggs, or the rolls are stale, or they don’t warm up the bread on the stove so the cheese doesn’t melt and instead just sort of sits there sadly. There was a fry cook at a deli on West Side Ave that made absolutely incredible egg and cheese sandwiches, but he didn’t show up for work one day and hasn’t been seen since. The quality of their breakfast sandwiches has never been the same.
After exhaustive research, I am pleased to announce that Taqueria Gloria really comes through, and is my new favorite. I go in around 10am on a Sunday morning, and they seem surprised to have a customer. The workers are sitting around a small table chatting, half-watching Spanish-language soap operas; one gets up and goes in the back to talk to someone. (Note: they have a breakfast menu; I’m not some jerk coming in and ordering something they don’t offer! But I just think maybe not too many people actually order from it.) Five minutes later, it arrives — perfection, wrapped in tin foil, $2.67. I haven’t had the other food from this place yet but everything smells incredible.
Stuffed falafel on a pita, Falafel Station, 2828 Kennedy Boulevard
From the outside, this looks like a mini-chain restaurant, weirdly slick and design-forward for the neighborhood. But inside, you get the feel of a family restaurant — the workers at it are completely unchanged from the day it opened a year+ ago, and they take incredible pride in what they make. I only go there at most about once every six weeks, but that’s enough that as soon as I walk in the door, the woman behind the register calls out “Hello my friend! The regular?” If there’s anything more than a few minute wait for my food, she hands me a small bowl of spicy chickpea soup, on the house.
Their menu is overwhelming. They seem to make falafel in a million different versions: on pita, on hero bread, over fries (!!!!!!!! I have never dared, but someday), over salad, on a tortilla; spicy/not spicy, stuffed/not stuffed, cheese/no cheese etc etc. If it’s too much to really get into and you just want a really good traditional one, I recommend the “stuffed falafel on a pita” — this gets me a hearty falafel, fried but without a hint of grease, with pine nuts, veggies, and tahini, for about $7. If you like hot sauce, I highly recommend the homemade Harissa.
Completely random, art-related picture
Hashtag “nofilter” and so forth; this is the view from the the entrance of the ongoing Dan Flavin exhibit at Mana Contemporary (probably should mention: all these walls are white; the colors that you see here are from cast light). I might revisit this and talk some more about the show some other time, but for now: getting to see this show approximately 80000000x is one of the best things about having a studio at Mana.
Community calendar
There’s going to be a screening of American Graffiti and Jaws at the Loews Jersey City on June 5th, $8. Seeing a movie at the Loews is a real treat; if you’ve never been, it’s a beautifully preserved movie “palace” right in the middle of JSQ. Just visiting the building alone is really worth it… plus you get a movie! And popcorn! There will also be a FREE event at the Loews on June 12th called “Brett & Ben: Live on the Morton Wonder Organ” involving cartoons and the incredible Loews organ being played.
There will be an art opening for the Ruth Hardinger exhibition at Mana Contemporary on June 5th, from 5-8pm. Hardinger’s work is unfamiliar to me, but it looks from the image on their site like she is working in the tradition of Arte Povera, with the press materials stating, “Her deft handling of ‘poor materials’—concrete, string, cardboard, graphite, rope, even dried foodstuff—suggests a kind of transubstantiation, an impulse to transcend the mundane, through artistry and evoke the eternal and sublime.” Be sure and RSVP if you want to go.
It used to be that you voted for a male representative and a female representative, but as of a recent decision, you now get to vote for two people to rep your neighborhood.
Not wanting to make this article any longer and drawn out than it is already, I’m skipping the discussion of “what is the county line” until a later date. But just as a quick definition: due to the design of the ballots in NJ, many activists claim that voters are led to vote “along the line” (aka for the dominant party’s candidates) with alternative candidates names being tucked away and hard to find. There’s a good explainer here. I have mixed feelings about all of this, but in essence: activists claim that the ballots are set up in a way that is not equal to all candidates, and in this case, the HCDO would get to pick the candidates who have preferential placement.
When I was doing the research for this, I checked the websites of both groups who are supporting candidates for this position. Apparently the site of the HC Progressive Alliance wasn’t working correctly, because it came up for me that they were only supporting two candidates — which I thought was odd, but it was on their official site two weeks before an election, so I just assumed that’s what they went with for whatever structural/organizational reason. Winds up they’re running more people than that, so my guesstimate number should be more like 20%. Anyway, this is linked elsewhere in the article, but to read more about their candidates go here.