Adrianne Davis

Adrianne Davis: Politicker photo 

NEWARK - Newly retired from her nearly 20-year career as clerk of the Essex County Freeholder Board, Adrianne Davis this month assumed her role as executive director of the North Ward Center.

It’s a return to her roots for the member of the 1963 Newark Teachers’ Union, who coordinated buses that carried activists to Washington, D.C. to hear Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech.

The former high school teacher helped found the North Ward Center in 1970 with her friend and fellow teacher, Steve Adubato.

"What Steve sought to do was stabilize the North Ward with programs that served the Italian population that lived here," said Davis, a native of the West Ward, who ran the early secretarial training program and worked as the North Ward Center’s administrator.

Essex County Democratic Party Chairman Phil Thigpen 

NEWARK - Essex County Committee Chairman Phil Thigpen today confirmed to PolitickerNJ.com that he would pursue another term as chair.

"We’re going to go again," he said in his office at the Robert Treat Hotel.

County Executive Joe DiVincenzoNEWARK - The Essex County Executive and Newark’s senior senator today both panned a proposal by North Ward Democratic leader Steve Adubato and a few others to dump County Chairman Phil Thigpen in favor of a longtime member of Adubato’s inner circle.

County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo and state Sen. Ronald Rice (D-Newark) pledged their full support for Thigpen, and denounced Adubato’s attempted power play to deliver the chairmanship to his friend, Adrianne Davis.

"Steve’s a guy who wants his epitaph to be, ‘I controlled everything in my life,’ but he’s just a guy with a big ego, who wants everyone to kiss his behind like we’re out here picking a bunch of cotton bales, black, white and Latino, all of us," Rice said. "To hell with Steve."

Himself a longtime Adubato ally who came up out of the North Ward, DiVincenzo stopped short of Rice’s all-out assault on his friend and political mentor, but was clear in his disapproval.

NEWARK - There is considerable speculation tonight regarding NorthSteve Adubato, Sr. Ward Democratic leader Steve Adubato’s efforts to build support within the Essex County Democratic Committee for Adrianne Davis to succeed Phil Thigpen as party chair.

Sources say Adubato, former party chair Ray Durkin, Thigpen, U.S. Rep. Donald Payne (D-10), former Assemblyman Bill Payne, County Executive Chief of Staff Phil Alagia, and party senior advisor Joe Parlavecchio discussed the move, which if it happens would take place after the June 3 election.

Davis, who serves as clerk of the Board of Chosen Freeholders, is a longtime friend of Adubato’s and worked as an administrator at Adubato’s North Ward Center for over 16 years. She currently serves on the Center’s Board of Trustees and as Vice President of the Robert Treat Academy Charter School Board of Trustees.