Ex Dem Linhares stirs East Ward drama with general election challenge in the 29th

NEWARK – The creeping disillusion Fred Linhares felt with the East Ward Democratic Party reached its denouement two weeks ago when the Ironbound attorney, Kean University professor and former municipal judge changed his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican and filed to run for the Assembly in the 29th Legislative District.

“I’ve been a registered Democrat my whole life,” said Linhares, 40, who served on the local bench from 1999 to 2002, when he hung up his robes to run for freeholder on a ticket with then-county executive candidate Tom Giblin.

That ticket famously lost to Joe DiVincenzo and his team, and when it comes to assessing the self-styled progressive Linhares, who admits he feels no heartfelt tug from the GOP and says he voted for Ralph Nader in the last three presidential elections, members of his former party generally point to 2002 as Linhares’s real turning point in politics.

“I’ve known Fred Linhares since we were kids, and I think he should have stayed as a judge. I respect everyone’s right to run, but he was a good municipal judge,” said Assemblyman Albert Coutinho (D-Newark).

Coutinho and his running mate, Assemblywoman L. Grace Spencer (D-Newark), figure to walk over Linhares in November in a district where Democrats dwarf Republicans, 48,110 to 3,385.

Linhares says he doesn’t have an alternative at this point.

“Greens have no power and the Indies are too sporadic,” he said. “I haven’t met (presumptive gubernatorial frontrunner for the GOP) Chris Christie or talked to him or his people. I hope he comes from a background challenging concentration of power. I will endorse whoever Republicans nominate, but I don’t anticipate receiving their help."

Linhares isn’t the only challenger in the 29th. He’s bracketed with fellow Republican Aracelis Sanabria-Tejada of Orange Street. Independent Democrat Andre Reames, a pastor and community activist from Hillside Township, is challenging Coutinho and Spencer in the primary.

But it’s Linhares who has the longest, most easily recognizable political history.

“Fred is the eternal optimist to run as a Republican in the 29th district,” said Giblin, who helped secure him the judgeship before they ran together countywide. “I wish him well, but he had been better served in the Democratic Party."

A one-time member of the Democratic Committee who had a falling out with party leader Joe Parlavecchio in 1999, Linhares says Coutinho and Spencer possess little wiggle room within the machinery of Newark politics. In addition to old foe Parlavecchio, he blames Mayor Cory Booker for promising change and then – in his words - reaffirming bossland attitudes in office.

“The Booker people are complicit; he’s worked hand in hand with the East Ward Democratic machine,” Linhares said. “He’s a lot of sizzle and no substance, a fraud and a hypocrite, and the result is that power politics is more entrenched than ever under Booker. I look at something like this federal stimulus package and I know it’s going to the power structure not the people."

Having defended his territory from a Booker attempt at an uprising last year - which Linhares denies was any awesome effort and in fact lacked all necessary infusion of leadership - Parlavecchio like Coutinho insists Linares’s transition to the GOP is more about him taking an unfortunate skid politically starting with the 2002 freeholder loss, followed by a failed 2006 council bid and some wilderness soul searching that now has left the younger, embittered Ironbounder with nowhere to go but into the arms of an almost non-existent Republican Party.

“This kid was trying to get on Sharpe James’s ticket, he endorsed Sharpe for mayor just before Sharpe pulled out of the 2006 race - how he ever thought he would be considered for Cory’s ticket after that is beyond me,” said Parlavecchio, who helped engineer an alliance between Councilman Augusto Amador and Booker. "Fred - he joined the committee one day, and the next day he wanted to be president - of the United States."

Running to represent the East Ward on the Booker Team, Amador beat Linhares by 1,700 votes.

An ally of the mayor’s going back to Booker’s Central Ward years, Spencer for at least a year had her own cringing sense of getting dumped and replaced by former Assemblyman Bill Payne in a North-Central-South Ward deal envisioned by Payne, Parlavecchio and Steve Adubato as a warning to the mayor that the same thing could happen to him.

Spencer maintained her standing in the party machine in part through Booker’s ring kissing efforts on her behalf.

“If he’s challenging me, everybody has a right to run,” Spencer said of Linhares, an old law school friend. “I am a little disappointed. We have many opportunities to do something the in the Democratic Party and it’s unfortunate he would go to the Republicans. You don’t knock down the whole house if part of the ceiling is damaged. The challenges and obstacles the party presents should not be cause for us to abandon the party. It’s up to us to stay in the party and make change where we can.”

Although he insists her ability to effectuate change is severely hampered by the party structure, where the plays must first run through the old guard, Linhares says he isn’t specifically targeting Spencer. It’s more about the East Ward, which means Parlavecchio.

Coutinho defends his and Spencer’s record in the Assembly and the party’s work for the 29th District.

“I’m proud of the hospital and schools construction (including the replacement of the Oliver Street School), and I am a proud Democrat,” Coutinho said. “With a Republican governor we never would have made those advances.

“I don’t run away from Gov. Corzine,” added the assemblyman. “I’m proud of the governor. We share some common values and I have appreciation for his business background. He is the first governor to have reduced state spending two years in a row, and I believe he is trying to do that which is not always politically convenient.”

Coutinho said he is working with other leaders to get private companies to “take that leap of faith to Newark” as he gets behind the urban transit hub tax incentive, which Coutinho says would create 2,000 jobs in his city.

But Linhares decries the party’s glacial movements to reverse what he cites as the state’s least educated and least literate legislative district, and he knows the forces he once hoped to rally see him as the oddball now, the no hoper, but he’s been there and doesn’t care.

“Politics has never been kind to me as far as the electorate is concerned but I love the issues,” Linhares said. “I’m trying to reform East Ward politics, as it needs to be reformed. I tried to do it as a Democrat, and if I have to I will do it as a Republican.”