PRAYER VIGIL AND ANNOUNCEMENT OF RELIEF EFFORTS FOR HAITIAN EARTHQUAKE VICTIMS

ELIZABETH – Senator Raymond Lesniak, Assemblyman Joseph Cryan, and Assemblywoman Annette Quijano will join community leaders for a prayer vigil tomorrow – Thursday, January 14th at 11 a.m. – to remember the victims of the Haitian earthquake and to draw attention to their relief effort. The vigil will be held at Jefferson Park Ministries, 477 Madison Avenue in Elizabeth.

A press conference to announce the establishment of “NJ for Haiti” and to detail local relief efforts will follow tomorrow’s vigil.

Reformists are crying foul over a bill that they say is aimed at stopping a group of New Brunswick activists from changing the way the city elects its council members. 

The bill, which has passed the senate and is set for an assembly vote on Monday, would force groups to wait a decade between tries to change the way municipal governments are elected. 

“That’s an abuse of the Legislature,” said the New Jersey Appleseed attorney Diana Jeffrey, who represents the New Brunswick Group, Empower Our Neighborhoods.  “This is trying to make them stop two years from now, and make them wait ten years.”

After months of wrangling, Empower Our Neighborhoods managed to get a question on the ballot in November that would expand the city council from five at-large members to nine members, of whom three would be at-large and six from wards.  The question was defeated by just over 100 votes. 

The group plans to try again in two years.  But if the bill is passed and signed into law, they will not be able to. 

Current law allows petitions to change the form of municipal governments to be brought every two, three or four years, depending on the type of government.  The new law, sponsored by Assemblywoman Annette Quijano (D-Elizabeth), would only allow those petitions to be brought once every 10 years. 

An identical version of the bill sponsored by state Sen. Nicholas Scutari (D-Linden) passed the senate yesterday 21-15 in a vote that was largely along party lines.   

Among the yes votes was Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck), who has built a reformist reputation by Bergen County's entrenched Democratic Party machinery.  Weinberg said she intended to vote no but hit the wrong button because she w as distracted by a phone call.

"I just looked up and pushed the yes button, and I didn't realize it was that bill, which I had marked down on my list to vote no on.  I made a mistake and didn't know it until the board was closed," said Weinberg, adding that she was lobbying her assembly colleagues to vote no on the bill on Monday.

Republicans received 52% of the total votes cast for State Assembly candidates in 2009, but won just 41% of the seats in a chamber where Democrats hold a 47-33 majority.  A total of 2,181,345 were cast for GOP Assembly candidates, compared to 2,001,772 (48%) for Democratic candidates.  Legislative candidates from both parties ran about a million votes ahead of their gubernatorial candidates.

This will help validate Republican claims that the 2001 redistricting plan benefitted Democrats; it also illustrates how much growth there has been in Republican areas of the state.

Among Assembly candidates, the top vote getter in the state was Brian Rumpf (R-Little Egg Harbor) who received 54,311 votes in his Ocean County-based ninth district. Second was his running mate, DiAnne Gove (R-Long Beach), who won 52,667 votes.  As a matter of comparison, that is about two and a half times the number of votes cast for Democrats Grace Spencer (D-Newark) and Albert Coutinho (D-Newark) in District 29, the most Democratic in the state.

Indeed, the top fifteen Assembly vote getters statewide are all Republicans:

ELIZABETH - First came Caroline Kennedy, then Patrick Kennedy, and tonight at the Portuguese Social Club, Bobby Kennedy, Jr. appeared in support of Gov. Jon Corzine.

Heedless of specific state issues, Kennedy went right for the jugular.

"We cannot reward Republicans for what they did to this country during the eight years prior to Barack Obama," said the son of the late Attorney General and 1968 candidate for president. "How can Chris Christie come over and seriously run for governor? It's time for them (Republicans) to sit down and let someone else run the state."

More than one thumb and forefinger blew a shrill and long whistle of approval into the big room amid resounding hand claps.

ELIZABETH - Union County party allies of Gov. Jon Corzine are leveling hard charges at someone who's used to doing the charging herself: Attorney General Anne Milgram, whose pursuit of a voter fraud case against Roselle Council President Jamel Holley this month resulted in a virtual dead end.

"Disappointment is an understatement," state Sen. Ray Lesniak (D-Elizabeth) said of Milgram, the Corzine administration's attorney general, for bringing charges against Holley in the first place.

Already feeling antagonized by the presence of corruption buster former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie in the governor's race, Democratic Party operatives in at least two or three of their base voter-rich regions, including Unon, have for months felt dogged by Milgram, who indicted Holley by accusation on Aug. 27th with illegally filling out portions of fewer than 30 absentee ballots.

In a Thursday letter to the Union County Local Source, Lesniak and his legislative colleagues, Assemblyman Joe Cryan (D-Union Twp.) and Assemblywoman Annette Quijano (D-Elizabeth), ripped Milgram over what they see as her unjust targeting of Holley, which might have had ruinous consequences for a young man seen by his allies see as a comer in Union County Democratic Party politics.  

Union County's four Democratic Assembly members formally backed Sheila Oliver (D-East Orange) for speaker today, including Democratic State Chairman Joseph Cryan (D-Union), who was in the running for the top spot.    

The move solidifies the a North-South Jersey deal connected to the senate leadership contest, where Senate Majority Leader Stephen Sweeney (D-West Deptford) yesterday announced that he had the votes to topple Senate President Dick Codey (D-Roseland).

Cryan is said to be the leading contender for Majority Leader.

In addition to Cryan, who is also the state Democratic chairman, Assemblywomen Annette Quijano (D-Elizabeth), Linda Stender (D-Fanwood) and Assembly Speaker Pro Tempore Gerald Green (D-Plainfield) said, through a statement released by Union County Democratic Chair Charlotte DeFilippo, that they would back Oliver.

CRYAN & QUIJANO HAIL CORZINE ADMINISTRATION FOR COMPLETING NEW PARKWAY/I-78 LINK

(UNION COUNTY) – Assemblyman Joseph Cryan and Assemblywoman Annette Quijano (both D-Union) on Thursday praised Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s administration for finally completing the long-awaited connection between the Garden State Parkway northbound and Interstate 78 westbound.

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U.S. Senator Robert Menendez (D-Hoboken) is playing a key role in a statewide effort to increase voter turnout among Latino voters for Gov. Jon Corzine's re-election campaign.  This weekend, Menendez presided over a meeting in New Brunswick that was attended by over 200 statewide Latino leaders, including U.S. Rep. Albio Sires (D-West New York), State Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Newark), Assemblywomen Nilsa Cruz-Perez (D-Camden) and Annette Quijano (D-Elizabeth), Assemblyman Albert Coutinho (D-Newark) and Vincent Prieto (D-Secaucus), Perth Amboy Mayor Wilda Diaz, Paterson Mayor Joey Torres, and Passaic Mayor Alex Blanco.

ELIZABETH - State Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck), the Democrats' candidate for lieutenant governor, walked the entirety of a long parade route as grand marshal of the Dominican Festival, a colorful, merengue-textured event that today was marred by violence.  

"There are always going to be some knuckleheads out there," said Paterson At-Large Councilman Rigo Rodriguez.

The incident - not connected to the campaign - occurred a few minutes after Weinberg criticized Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie for failing to disclose his $46,000 mortgage loan to U.S. Attorney underling Michele Brown.

"He forgot that he's receiving $500 a month?" wondered Gov. Jon Corzine's running mate, who capped a weekend of Latino outreach with this Dominican spectacle.

It got rough once Weinberg climbed into a car and departed after completing the parade on foot with Assemblywoman Annette Quijano (D-Elizabeth), and Trenton Councilman Manny Segura.

EGAN & QUIJANO BILL TO HELP STATE ENFORCE WORKER COMPENSATION LAWS SIGNED BY GOVERNOR

(TRENTON) – Legislation Assemblyman Joseph V. Egan and Assemblywoman Annette Quijano sponsored to give the state an additional tool to effectively enforce New Jersey’s worker compensation laws was signed today by Gov. Jon S. Corzine.

The law (A-3569) allows the state to issue a stop-work order against an employer found to have knowingly failed to provide workers’ compensation coverage, misrepresented employees as independent contractors or provided false, incomplete or misleading information concerning the number of employees.

“Most employers responsibly and properly classify their workers and pay workers’ compensation premiums, but some skirt the law,” said Egan (D-Middlesex), the Assembly Labor Committee chairman. “That puts workers at risk and hurts responsible employers who play by the rules. This is, quite simply, an additional tool to help enforce our workers’ compensation laws.”