NEWARK - The door to Peter Pantoliano's headquarters swings open.

A pair of operatives sit inside and they're so intent on the work, they don't notice a visitor.  

They run down strategy.

"We're working very hard," confirms the East Ward candidate by cellphone.

He's at City Hall right now. Just left headquarters.

But he plans to be back at HQ. Pronto.

A lot of the merchants around Ferry Street support Pantoliano's challenge of veteran East Ward Councilman Augusto Amador. The local optometrist counts himself a part of the business community.

"The ones who don't have Peter Pantoliano signs in their windows are scared to put them up," says Pantoliano.

But Amador starts with a base of 2,600 to 3,000 votes in the core Portuguese community in a ward that usually maxes out municipally at around 5,000 votes. Allies of one of Amador's most solid backers, longtime East Ward operative Joe Parlavecchio say if Pantoliano - an Italian-American like himself - can beat Amador, it's time for Parlavecchio to rethink retirement.

Not happening, he says.

However, if the city as a whole lacks the edge of a major campaign contest - "quietist I can ever remember an election year at this time," observes one South Ward insider - Pantoliano, notwithstanding the odds, is undisputably making an enthusiastic effort to unseat incumbent Amador.

Of course, Amador and his allies don't think Pantoliano's credible after they caught his campaign projecting bad intel about a PhD the challenger received at a nonexistent university. He can run around all he likes, they think they can sink him with one well placed mail piece setting his record straight. Moreover, even Amador's detractors acknowledge his integrity, and admit that part of the business backlash against him in this race evolved out of his refusal to grant City Hall favors.

But whatever the outcome of his own race, Pantoliano, an unabashed pro-Mayor Cory Booker independent running against a member of the Booker team in Amador, helps create dynamism in a ward where Booker is favored over mayoral challenger Clifford Minor, according to Newark insiders.

Minor and Pantoliano talked at one point about an alliance, but Pantoliano, a Booker backer, couldn't join a team against the mayor. In running hard as a solo act, he fosters an intensified political atmosphere in the East that benefits the incumbent mayor.

It's the opposite of what's happening in the North Ward, a bigger and stronger ward than the East, where the absence of a race arguably hurts Booker.

An insider grabs a booth in one of the suburban towns outside of Newark and shakes his head when asked if he believes Minor is intentionally running a sluggish campaign against Booker.

What about the fact that Minor doesn't have a candidate in the North Ward?

"Good move," says the insider. "Smart. The whole point is Minor doesn't want to stir up the North Ward. You figure, Booker can rely on strong support in the North. So Minor doesn't want to remind people there's a contest there."

"But what about (At-Large Councilman Luis) Quintana? He's a North Ward-based candidate, he's running."

"Not the same," says the insider. "The ward races are the ones that create the highbeam effects, not the at-large races. No, not having a North Ward candidate is a good move by Minor."

He pauses.

"What hurts Minor is not having a West Ward candidate," he says with some finality.

This part here involves the Rices, a West Ward father-son political family who have been exhaustively documented as political frienimies. The older Rice, a state senator, detests Booker, and fervently supports Minor. His son is running as a member of the Booker Team - without opposition. Sources say the fact that junior doesn't have to worry about a Minor Team challenger is the political handiwork of his father, intent on protecting the political fortunes of the son.

"But it really does hurt Minor, because no contest in the west means the west is going to sleep," argues the insider, who says Minor's strongest potential support exists in the South, West and Central wards.

In the last of these, not only does old school Central Ward Councilman Charles Bell help Booker, but so do the presense of pro-Booker challengers to Bell's council seat Darren Sharif (son of Booker political brain Carl Sharif) and City Hall staple Richard Whitten, who, like Pantoliano in the East, can hammer the incumbent councilman and simultaneously make a case for Booker. 

Whitten and Sharif additionally break up Minor Team member Charon Motyane's ability to identify herself as the lone anti-Bell vote.

Booker Chief of Staff Mo Butler disputes the idea that the mayor - who won his 2006 election with 72% of the vote - lacks power in the predominantly African American wards, including the South, or that the message of Booker as an outsider has any resonance at this point. 

"If you ask most Newarkers, they see a record of improved parks and schools and a reduction in violent crime in part achieved through the cameras we have installed around the city," says Butler. "They show a sense of pride. We cannot get caught up in the attitudes of a disgruntled few.

"We're facing such big problems, we've had to focus all of our attention on violent crime - like a laser beam, and we are very proud of what (Police Director) Garry McCarthy has done."

At his campaign launch on Saturday, South Ward Councilman Oscar James II proudly welcomes Booker to the Greater Abyssinian Baptist Church in the heart of the South Ward. He admits the misguided nature of his and Booker's 2008 efforts to try to topple the Payne political empire down here, and burnishes a lot of different would-be factions and Booker opponents as front and center James supporters, including former Councilwoman Gayle Cheneyfield-Jenkins.

"It's like a family," says former Councilman Calvin West.

Cheneyfield-Jenkins believes James is strong down here in his own right, and is early in this campaign exhibiting stronger organization than his challenger, former Deputy Mayor Ras Baraka, a Central Ward high school principal and member of the Minor Team.

Intent on running a dignified race, James doesn't like the characterization of his contest with Baraka as a street brawl or a war, but compared to the other wards, this contest arguably has more intense implications, mostly on the strength of Baraka's reputation as someone with a political pulse.

Visible in the crowd at Greater Abyssinian - and notable because he's everywhere, even beyond the borders of his own ward in an election year, is Pantoliano, dancing and clapping, and showing his support for Booker and James, and by all appearances throughly enjoying himself.

If he's not waging a winnable war against Amador, according to the East Ward old-timers and insiders, he appears loveably intent at the very least on not allowing James-Baraka to be the only ward contest in this mostly quiet city.