Rice targets Smith administration with amped up role in Irvington municipal contests

Sen. Ronald Rice (D-Essex) hopes his written request to Attorney General Anne Milgram for an investigative audit of Irvington, cc’d to voters, will give North Ward Councilman David Lyons a leg up in Tuesday’s municipal elections.

A vocal critic of Mayor Wayne Smith’s management of the Essex County town and often the lone dissenting vote on the council, 12-year incumbent Lyons is in a competitive race with Newark Det. Gene Etchison.

Lyons has questions about his town’s obligation to pay the state back $8 million over a 20-year period, a result of the Smith administration’s bonding without the permission of the state Department of Community Affairs.

Rice has the same questions.

"The senator is asking that the AG’s office come in to do an audit of the books," said Rice campaign operator Lionel Leach.

On the heels of the Rice letter dropped into voters’ mailboxes Friday and Saturday, Lyons this week put out a robocall asking residents to vote for himself and West Ward candidate Keith White. Leach also has a television truck circulating the streets of Irvington on Lyons’s and White’s behalf.

But it was the letter from Rice that stung the administration and the mayor’s allies, prompting Smith to craft his own letter in response - which will go out to voters this week.

At the very least, Rice’s written efforts on Lyons’ behalf caused a worsening of relations between Rice and Team Irvington.

"This thing flabbergasted me when it hit," Smith said. "There’s no monkey business going on here."

Smith acknowledged that the administration botched its schools debt restructuring application to the state. "They overpaid us," said Smith. "But we have already settled the issue. We’re paying that money back over a period of 20 years."

In his ward race against Lyons, Etchison receives support from Team Irvington, the town’s strongest political organization, which was founded by At Large Councilman (and Freeholder) M. Bilal Beasley.

It was Beasley last year - running with Smith’s endorsement - who challenged Rice for the senator’s 28th District seat.

Rice won, and now he wants to make sure Lyons maintains his foothold on the council against a machine that, aligned with Steve Adubato and Newark Mayor Cory Booker, nearly toppled him last year.