Angelo Corradino

Somerset County Democratic Chair Peg Schaffer, local races

MARTINSVILLE – It looks like a joke at first or at least an appropriate back burner relegation for the Somerset County Democratic Party, which sits under a pizza parlor facing away from the road.

They don’t dominate here, haven’t for years, and that’s an understatement, but the little storefront plastered over with Democratic Party campaign signs belies the internal workings of what new party chair Peg Schaffer sees as a movement.

“I forgot how to practice law,” says Schaffer, sporting a “McBush” button and gulping coffee as she surveys headquarters where two dozen campaign workers stay on the phones.

Manville Mayor Angelo Corradino lost his bid for re-election to a fifth termA bowling alley named Tenpin Lanes stands in the center of Manville, between a pair of Superfund sites that are the remnants of the town’s bulldozed factory era.

The alley for years has been a source of entertainment and relaxation for the hard luck blue collar work force here, and for Angelo Corradino, the borough’s longest serving mayor who straddled the transition Manville made from factories to shopping malls, and who earlier this month lost by 78 votes in his bid for a fifth term in office.

An old high school linebacker and longsuffering Jets and Mets fan who spent 19 years as an elected official in Manville, the past 16 of those as mayor, Corradino says rumors that he wanted to go full time with an annual salary of $95,000 sank his chances of re-election.