The convergences in Belleville's Rovell v. Drozdz

Mario Drozdz 

BELLEVILLE - Less than a week before Election Day, both sides open up with everything they’ve got, and the resulting facial expressions and body language indicate that some of the shots have landed.

A glossy mail piece hits the tightknit blue collar neighborhoods off Franklin Avenue that run up against the Parkway on the other side. The man whose face appears in unflattering photos on those mailers storms to the microphone at a rally for him and his running mates.

"It’s pure and utter B.S.," cries Ward Two Councilman Steve Rovell, referring to challenger Mario Drozdz’s charges that Rovell was part of a team that increased taxes $10 million in thee years, indulged in political favoritism and hired nearly a million dollar’s worth of town employees who don’t live in Belleville.

"Most of the town employees you see on that list were hired by the town manager," Rovell tells the dinner crowd Thursday night at the Chandelier. "I don’t want to hear this crap."

Moreover, several of the government workers listed on Drozdz’s mailer came during the years when Drozdz served as a mayor and councilman in the 1990s. Drozdz insists that at the time they were hired, they lived in Belleville.

"They’ve since moved," says Drozdz, who is himself stinging from the effects of Rovell’s mailers, which write him off as a has-been who hiked taxes eight times in eight years and double-dipped as a councilman and aide to U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-8).

"Those are lies," insists Drozdz. "I voted three times for a tax increase, twice I voted to reduce taxes and the other times I abstained from voting on the budget."

As for Pascrell, "We’re friends," he exclaims. "I make public appearances for the congressman when he can’t get to events. Been doing it for years. He never paid me a cent."

Drozdz also assists Assemblyman/Freeholder Ralph Caputo (D-Belleville), who backs him and his two running mates, Thomas Salzano and Elvin Pereira, against Mayor Ray Kimble’s team: Rovell, Councilman John Notari, and Paul "P.J." Mac Donald.

A retired teamster and Democratic Party insider, Drozdz announced his candidacy around the time that fever was arguably at its zenith in the aftermath of Sen. Barack Obama’s upset victory over establishment candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Iowa primary.

Caputo then suggested Drozdz in his challenge of Kimble’s power was a little like the Obama of Belleville, but Rovell protests the packaging of his opponent as anything other than a ghost from the town’s not too distant past.

"All of his negative literature has really back-fired on him," Rovell, senior analyst project manager for Huntington Learning Corp., says of Drozdz. "If you’re new to the game you can get away with that, but not when you’ve been around as long as he has, and when you have a record like his."

Caputo’s looming presence in Tuesday’s competitive elections hasFormer Montclair Mayor Bob Russo prompted his own immediate rival to land on the scene with a vengeance: Bob Russo, former mayor of Montclair, who’s challenging Caputo for freeholder off the line in the June 3 election.

At the rally in the Chandelier for Rovell and his running mates, Russo sits in the bar across from Councilman Kevin Kennedy, and he’s wired as he talks campaign strategy.

Kennedy lets him talk.

He knows Russo walks around with a 30-year old political war wound. Moments before being sworn-in as freeholder in 1978, Russo watched as the results of absentee ballots abruptly swung victory over to James Piro of Nutley by 36 votes.

Three decades later, he’s running a campaign of public outrage against Caputo, and trying to capitalize on the incumbent’s status as a dual office holder.

With an eye to trying to keep Caputo on his side of the line, Kennedy added his name to Russo’s list of freeholder slate mates. At the moment, he appears far more concerned about the municipal races on Tuesday. Still, the councilman won’t discount the positive role Russo is playing in that regard.

"You deserve some credit," Kennedy breaks in. "You do deserve some credit, Bob. You’re forcing Ralph to spend money against you, so the money’s all dried up for Drozdz. Look at his ELEC report."

Belleville Councilman Kevin Kennedy

Drozdz’s report shows that of the $12,933 he’s raised, $2,450 came from Caputo. Drozdz reported just $1,171 raised in the last filing period, none of it from the freeholder. He has $2,728 in the bank.

Rovell, meanwhile, has raised $24,245, $2,575 of it in the last period. He has a closing balance of $3,170. Among his contributors is Sen. Ronald Rice (D-Essex), who chipped in $700, saying that he doesn’t forget the fact that Mayor Kimble and Kimble’s council allies backed him in his tough re-election fight last year.

He also doesn't forget that Caputo stood on the other side of that fight.

"I’m holding the fort," says Rice. "We live together, we die together."

Whatever Russo’s hopes that the support of backlash allies in Belleville will translate into sufficient political power, Caputo doesn’t give him much of a chance, and waves off the dual office-holding charge.

"It’s not illegal, and it’s not unethical," Caputo says. "I’m retired, I have the time."

Kennedy says given the politics of Essex County, it will indeed be difficult to beat the man himself, but he believes Rovell and company can turn back Caputo’s allies at the local level.

"Ralph’s two school board candidates just took a beating, if that’s any indication," says Kennedy, moments before Councilman Michael Nicosia calls his name to go up and address the crowd on behalf of the council candidates.

"He’s really a teddy bear at heart," Nicosia promises.

But presently Kennedy with the microphone in his hand proceeds to unload.

"If any of these three idiots guys get in, we’re screwed," he says, referring to Drozdz, Pereira and Salzano.

A little later, Rovell takes his own swings at the opposition. He begins with an ode to Belleville, recollections of wandering through Town Hall as a boy and being in awe. Now he’s fighting for his second term on the council, and as he answers Drozdz’s charges to the riled up crowd Thursday night, the usually mild-mannered family man who not too long ago survived a bout with pneumonia, unleashes some anger.

"You’ve really become a politician," someone tells him.

"I don’t know how to take that," says Rovell, a day before his campaign’s toughest mailer to date is set out to go out against Drozdz, linking the challenger with Newark’s North Ward politics.

Got to do it, is the campaign’s attitude. And with the county battles going on out there, some of them converging here, Rovell knows he’s finally in a two-man street fight - Belleville-style - to hold off Drozdz, whose hobby is politics.

Belleville Town Hall