Max Pizarro's Video Blog

Barack Obama at a Jersey City campaign rally
More than 3,000 people packed a gym at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City on Wednesday to hear Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

"My voice is a little hoarse, my eyes are a little bleary, my back is a little sore, but my spirit is strong," he told the crowd. "And I am ready to bring about change in America, how about you?"

Obama reveled in his Jersey City audience, and his campaign staff urged the impassioned crowd to take a more active role in the February 5 primary in a state where Hillary Clinton has won most of the party establishment endorsements and maintains a double digit lead in independent polls.

Speaking last week at Toms River Mayor Thomas Kelaher's swearing-in ceremony, U.S. Attorney Chris Christie preaches the politics of hope.

Speaking in the Edison Family Restaurant on Saturday, Edison Mayor Jun Choi uses a hometown hero as a reference point.

The polls in New Hampshire show Sen. John McCain holding a slight lead over former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, who was banged up in Iowa on his way into the granite state’s primary tomorrow.

N.J. State Director Richard Mroz said McCain’s candor and experience, particularly on foreign policy, distinguish him from Romney. Trying to turn that against him, Romney’s people have snickered about the craggy Arizona senator’s 70 plus years.

Edison Mayor Jun Choi, Assemblyman Neil Cohen, Susan Weir, Vanessa Delago, Lakshmi Sankar, Gail Jones, Julie Diaz 

Catapulted by the news out of Iowa, Sen. Barack Obama’s supporters rallied across the state of New Jersey on Saturday, from Trenton to Newark and points in between, bolstering troops and adding new numbers to their ranks.

Speaking to a juked crowd packed into the Edison Family Restaurant, Mayor Jun Choi used the proximity of his town’s Menlo Park section to draw a link between Obama and the ultimate Jersey tech-head, Thomas Alva Edison.

"For seven years, he patented more than 400 technologies that revolutionized the world," the mayor said of the Menlo Park wizard. "We can honestly say this township is the birthplace of the technological revolution because he started the technological revolution."

Obama Campaign State Director Mark Alexander

On the day of the Iowa caucuses, the New Jersey state director of Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has one immediate strategy, win or lose: on the next morning he’s going to stand up volunteers at different locales: the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, Newark Penn Station, Jersey City. They will be out there waving "Obama" signs, staying visible, shouting, working.

"We were always the candidate talking about change, that message hasn’t changed," says Mark Alexander, 41, seated in his West Orange office on Thursday, composed - given the stakes. Obama’s wife said if they didn’t win Iowa, the campaign would be finished.

"Fundamentally," says Alexander, "we are content that we are offering something the American people really want."

 Toms River Mayor Thomas KelaherReflecting on when he first moved to Toms River over 50 years ago, Thomas P. Kelaher said there were more chickens and chicken coops than people and houses, and now the Ocean County shore town has a population of almost 100,000 and is the seventh largest municipality in the state.

Still, it has some distance to go before it becomes a full-fledged city, as New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg reminded Kelaher when they lunched several days ago at a meeting of mayors.

"When he asked me to describe the characteristics of Toms River, I told him we did have 600 miles of streets and he said, ‘Tom, that’s nice, but in New York City we have 6,000 miles of streets,’" said Kelaher, 75, who was sworn in as the town’s second elected mayor at Town Hall on Tuesday.

Hamilton Mayor John BencivengoStrengthened by what he described as a "shared vision with my people, a cause to be accomplished and a dream come true," John Bencivengo officially became mayor of Hamilton today as he was sworn in by U.S. Rep. Chris Smith in the ballroom of the Nottingham Firehouse in front of a crowd of 350 people.

"I wish that I could have given a more cheerful address today," said Bencivengo in a nod to the town’s $10 million budget deficit. "But even if our fiscal circumstances had been better, even if we had ample surplus, I’d be saying the same things. It should be our goal, no matter the circumstances, to do more with less."

The former Republican Party municipal chairman and fired government worker ran and won on a platform of restoring common sense and accountability to government. Today Bencivengo swore always to remember that working families fund the town, and promised to present the 2009 budget on time in July.

He made the second of these vows in defiance of the record of his predecessor, Glen Gilmore, who sat on the document last year until a judge ruled he had to release it to the Township Council prior to the November election. The release of the 2008 budget, which initially showed a $5 million shortfall, helped propel the Republican Bencivengo to victory over Gilmore by fewer than 500 votes.

Assemblyman Michael Doherty, a West Point graduate and former Army Captain who has a son in the military, says people in the military support Paul because they are tired of the United States serving as the world's policeman.

Although he voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 - in part the first time because of the Republican candidate's promise not to nation-build - Assemblyman Michael Doherty admits the Bush administration has been an international disaster.