Healy sworn in to second full term

JERSEY CITY -- After easily winning a low-turnout election in May, Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy was sworn into his second full term today.

The event, which was formal but with the occasional dose of humor, was attended by the state’s top politicians: Gov. Jon Corzine, U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park) and U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-Hoboken), who argued that Healy, having won 53% of the vote in a five man race, had won a mandate based on his five-year record.  

Also sworn in were the city’s nine council members, most of whom were already incumbents.  All but one of them ran on Healy’s slate.  
    
Healy gave 30 minute policy-focused inaugural speech that he seemed anxious to get through, occasionally stopping to tell the audience that he was almost done and asking the person running his teleprompter to speed things up.

Healy talked about “doing more with less” during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression (what he called the “New Great Depression”), while generating revenue through environmentally friendly development and “smart growth.”  He pledged that the city’s rapid development on the Manhattan-facing waterfront would expand to include more areas of the city.  He talked about companies footing the bill for contaminated site cleanup, affordable housing, getting federal funding for transportation projects, anti handgun programs, increasing diversity, hosting golf pros like Tiger Woods at a recently built golf course.  

He gave special emphasis to making sure that Jersey City is not undercounted in the 2010 census, and did not fail to mention the city’s new “friend at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue” – whose campaign he supported when the vast majority of the state was backing Hilly Clinton.  

“We believe the 2010 census will not only show the remarkable growth of our city, making it perhaps the larges city in the state --  sorry, Cory [Booker] – but will also demonstrate our unique ethnic diversity.”  

But the highlight of the morning came about 20 minutes into Healy’s speech, when his wife Maureen stepped up to the lectern to hand him a bottle of water.

“Water?  I don’t drink water.  Don’t you read the Jersey Journal?” he said in a not-so-subtle reference to his reputation as a heavy drinker, as well as a couple well-publicized alcohol-fueled incidents.    The comment brought the crowd to stitches for about 30 seconds.  

Another light moment came during Menendez’s speech, in which he sung Healy an Irish ballad that began, “‘There was a lad named Jerry, whose years were 50-(cough).”  

Menendez then said he would work to get more federal funds for the city, like the “couple million” in energy block grants he said were already on the way.  

Lautenberg praised Healy as “a man of vision and leadership” and “a man who knows what it means to come form humble beginnings.” 

The crowd in this Democratic stronghold was friendly to Gov. Corzine, who has had differences with Healy but got a standing ovation when he took the podium.  At this moment, Corzine is not the favorite against former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie in November, but he said he’s hoping to “follow in [Healy’s] path” towards overwhelming victory.

“When I first became governor, I gave this guy my cell phone number, and Jerry uses that cell phone more than any other mayor in the State of New Jersey.  I have heard about the Jersey City Medical Center.  I have heard about school construction.   I have heard about where we’re not putting money into our economic development areas, and how municipal aid is working.  No one is a more active advocate for their city than Jerry Healy."

Healy, a former councilman and judge, narrowly won the office in a special 2004 election to replace the late Mayor Glenn Cunningham, who had died suddenly after suffering a heart attack.  In 2005, Healy easily won reelection against relatively nominal opposition.