Special edition: Olean Ave fire
And more: honoring Venus Xtravaganza, the Elections Transparency Act is terrible, meet the candidates, the oddities market is back!, an art show to check out, and more.
Hello! With Easter this Sunday and Passover underway, I wanted to get out a special edition of the newsletter — there’s a lot of things happening, and I’m not sure if folks will be distracted with the holidays. So please accept this special edition of the newsletter in lieu of one this weekend, and I’ll see you all again a week from this Sunday. Enjoy your week! — Amy
Olean Ave fire
An absolutely devastating four-alarm fire hit my neighborhood on Wednesday morning, displacing 19 people. This is still a developing story, but for now there is a community call for clothing that I wanted to make you aware of:
Honoring Venus Xtravaganza
Last Friday was Trans Day of Visibility, a day where LGBTQ+ activists get together and remember trailblazers in the community and celebrate trans rights. This year, Jersey City had a very special event, as trans icon Venus Xtravaganza — who I never realized was from JC — was remembered. I don’t seem to be able to plug in the video that was filmed by News12, but here’s a link to it — it’s a great story, made even greater by some truly amazing Jersey accents and a mix of old and new Jersey City.
If you don’t know who Venus was, I highly recommend the movie Paris is Burning. The film, while not without its faults, is an excellent look into late 1980s NYC drag balls. Here are some classic clips starring Venus:
The Elections Transparency Act is terrible
From Tuesday morning’s NJ Monitor daily email:
With very little fanfare yesterday, Murphy signed the so-called Elections Transparency Act, which dramatically increases how much donors can give to candidates, limits the number of campaigns our election law watchdog can investigate for violations, and takes a wrecking ball to local pay-to-play ordinances. There was little fanfare, I assume, because everyone who voted for this was calling all their maxed-out donors asking them to pony up.
If you think elections are bad in NJ — and by bad I mean, money driving the conversation not what’s best for the state, corrupt politicians flaunting election laws, and the like, well you haven’t seen anything yet. This act will be all of that on steroids. This is a bad day in the history of New Jersey elections. This new act will raise donation limits and also limit investigation into potential wrongdoing by campaigns.
Let’s break down what this interestingly named Elections Transparency Act does. From another article by NJ Monitor:
The measure, which was met with broad opposition from good government groups, will at least double limits on donations to candidates to $5,200, while raising limits on donations to county and state party committees, among some others, to $75,000. The new limits go into effect immediately.
It will preempt local laws meant to prevent officials from driving contracts to donors and instead require all governments to abide by the state pay-to-play law, which the bill weakens.
Candidates can now raise more money from fewer people than ever before. And if they get elected, it’s a lot easier to reward those megadonors with the lucrative contracts that come with that office.
This is terrifying. You have to ask yourself what chance candidates that oppose the machine will ever have. If one candidate is favored to win and there are individuals or companies looking to do business with whoever holds that office, the favored candidate is going to raise even more money. Politics in NJ just got way more entrenched and things are going to be even harder for independent candidates who challenge the system, and it was certainly difficult before.
At the same time, the bill cuts the statute of limitations on campaign finance violation cases to two years, down from 10. The state Election Law Enforcement Commission has said the change would invalidate 80% of its active cases, including a few filed in January against two legislative leadership committees and the Democratic State Committee alleging the groups had failed to properly report hundreds of thousands of dollars in fundraising and spending.
So, if you’re currently being investigated for some kind of campaign fraud and what you’re accused of happened more than two years ago, good news! That’s all been dropped. Note that if this bill went into effect in NY state, we wouldn’t have the situation we currently have at a federal level, where Trump might actually be held responsible for things he did in 2016.
The bill will require independent expenditure groups — PACs and certain 501 nonprofits — to report donations worth more than $7,500, down from $10,000, but only if those donations were made to further independent expenditures. That means money donated for mailers and ads must be disclosed, but not funds set aside for lobbying. Independent spending groups will also be required to disclose all spending related to an independent expenditure instead of only those worth more than $3,000.
Supporters of the bill are pushing this as a positive, saying that it represents a tightening of rules that previously existed. But it also represents a potential boon to lobbying, and there’s plenty of room here to hide funds from shady organizations looking to influence elections.
There is some pretty bleak stuff in this bill. From Politico:
Despite how important this bill is, Murphy held no press conference to mark the signing. He didn’t even offer a written statement. The action was just briefly noted in a press release that also mentioned another bill he signed. That’s pretty much in keeping with how this bill worked its way through the legislative process: Lots of testimony against it, from people and groups that span the ideological spectrum. By late in the process, nobody testified in favor of it. Nevertheless, it passed with the slimmest majority in the Senate and not much more easily in the Assembly.
You would think that such a fundamental change to New Jersey political campaigns are financed would be worthy of more than a single line in a press release. But the fact that the only statements issued about the signing came from Republicans complaining about it — at least in my inbox — shows you that Democrats want as little attention to this as possible. It is, for lack of a better word, icky.
The elected officials that represent our area in the Assembly and State Senate overwhelmingly voted in favor of this. The only ones locally who didn’t vote “yes” in the final vote were Sandra Cunningham (who has been abstaining from voting due to cognitive problems; she will be leaving office shortly as a result of these issues) and Brian Stack (who voted in favor of an earlier version of the same bill and wasn’t present for the final vote — it’s a little unclear as to what happened there).
Overwhelmingly, NJ Democrats voted in favor of this new bill. This is hugely disappointing, and they’re counting on us to not notice. As you can see in the Politico article above, they’re expecting we’re just going to ignore this, that we’re going to be distracted by what’s going on with Trump in NYC rather than what’s happening in our own backyard. And if you’re disgusted with this behavior, I encourage you to write to them and let them know you have noticed what they’ve done, and that you plan to hold them accountable. A lot of people reached out to me about this over the week, and they are angry — and I wanted to help everyone to direct their anger in a potentially positive direction.
The 31st and 33rd Districts cover Jersey City. That means Angela McKnight — currently an Assemblyperson who is currently running for Sandra Cunningham’s state senate position — William B. Sampson, Annette Chaparro, and Raj Mukherji represent us in the Assembly, and they were all Yes votes. In the state senate, we have Cunningham and Stack. Cunningham is really removed from this whole situation due to her medical condition; Stack was a Yes before he eventually abstained, so I don’t even know what to say in that situation.
Here are the email addresses for the people who voted yes, should you want to reach out:
asmMukherji@njleg.org
aswMcknight@njleg.org
aswChaparro@njleg.org
asmSampson@njleg.org
Etiquette/best practices for writing to your elected officials
Look, you can write whatever you want to write. But some guidelines on writing a letter that’s actually effective include:
Include your full name, address, and telephone number. (This is so they can see you’re a real person who lives in their district.)
Be polite. No all caps, and definitely no cursing. And of course no threats or anything stupid like that.
Reference the name of the bill, the “Election Transparency Act” so they know specifically what you’re referring to.
It’s already passed, but you can at least let them know that you know how they voted and that you are not happy with it. It’s something.
Meet the Candidates: Eleana Little and Craig Guy
There’s going to be a forum (a debate, perhaps?) featuring the two candidates for Hudson County Executive on April 15th. You can go see it in person from 10am to noon, or tune in to the JSQ Community Association’s Facebook page. If you’d like to submit questions to be asked, reach out to them at hello@jsqca.com.
Henceforth, I think we should all refer to this race as the Little/Guy race, just because “little guy” so nicely rolls off the tongue and maybe it’s a good way to get people to pay attention? Regardless, I’m grateful to the JSQ neighborhood association for hosting this, so voters can see both candidates on an equal platform.
Oddities Market: Spring Mourning
One of the best events in Jersey City has a new chapter — yeah, that’s right, it’s spring and the Oddities Market is back! Come check out creepy skulls, animal fetuses in jars, Goth kid accessories, and — for the first time — burlesque performers! For more info, check out their website.
Blurred Time art show opening
A new exhibition called Blurred Time, curated by Lucy Rovetto, opens Friday evening and continues through April 23rd at 150 Bay Street, corner of Provost and 1st, and featuring over a dozen local artists, all of whom live in the 150 Bay Street residence:
The opening is Friday the 7th from 6-9pm, and after that the show runs every Saturday and Sunday to the 23rd, with gallery hours 1pm-4pm. Wheelchair accessible.