Bernard Kenny

Frank Esposito, a longtime college history professor, is independent Chris Daggett's running mate

NORTH ARLINGTON -- Independent lieutenant governor candidate Frank Esposito says there's an idea out there about him that's just not accurate.

"The illusion that was reflected in one of the questions at the debate - that I'm this kind of ivory tower academic who knows nothing about politics - is a false perception that has deliberately been created," he said.  .

Esposito, 68, is a history professor at Kean University and a former interim president there.  A lifelong New Jerseyan who grew up in Ocean City, Esposito has never run for elected office at any level before, but he worked for two years as an assistant commissioner of education under Gov. Tom Kean - where he met his current running mate, Christopher Daggett -- and later spent two years in the Christie Whitman administration working the Charter School Act of 1995. 

Writing and passing that charter school legislation took bipartisan cooperation, Esposito said, with people like former Senate Education Chair Jack Ewing (R-Peapack-Gladstone) and state Sen. Bernard Kenny (D-Hoboken). 

Nevertheless, that inside politics experience has not yet translated to a high public profile.  
A recent Monmouth University poll showed that 93% of likely voters either had not heard of Esposito or did not know enough to form a judgment, but Esposito says people have started to recognize him since Thursday night's televised lieutenant governor debate.

Still, Esposito remains the most obscure of the six gubernatorial and lieutenant governors who are, at least in the eyes of the Election Law Enforcement Commission, considered viable. 

This morning, Esposito stumped at a senior center in North Arlington - a crucial blue collar swing town in the state's biggest swing county.  About 25 seniors listened to him - mostly politely - although some chatted and two women played cards in the back of the room. 

The legal defense team of former State Sen./plumbing consultant Joseph Coniglio (D-Paramus) has an interesting strategy to convince jurors that Coniglio is innocent:  they had two of Coniglio's former colleagues testify that he lacked the juice to deliver very much money from the state budget to his client, Hackensack University Medical Center.  Former Senate Majority Leader Bernard Kenny (D-Hoboken) told the jury that only the Governor, the Senate President and the Assembly Speaker actually have the power to deliver, while Senate Judiciary Chairman Paul Sarlo (D-Wood-Ridge) said that a legislative spreadsheet which credited Coniglio for some of the appropriations items was inaccurate, suggesting that others, including Sarlo, were really the ones responsible.

Edward Werner has filed a lawsuit against the state and Attorney General Anne Milgram, alleging that politics played a key role in his termination last year as Acting Executive Director of the Victims of Crime Compensation Office. 

Werner, whose eleven year old son was murdered in 1997, says that he was fired for seeking to eliminate waste in state agency that compensates the victims of violent crime and for moving to reform a system that permitted no-bid construction contracts.

He alleges that then-State Senate Majority Leader Bernard Kenny (D-Hoboken) pushed him to protect the job of Cathleen Russo Delanoy, a lawyer for the agency whose position could have been eliminated if legislation to reorganize the agency was approved.  Delanoy is the daughter of former Senate President John Russo and the sister-in-law of State Sen. Robert Singer (R-Lakewood).

State Sen. Brian Stack, the Mayor of Union City, is upset that political enemy Rudy Garcia was invited to Jerramiah Healy's campaign kickoff.

Sources say that Union City Mayor Brian Stack is off the charts livid that two of his political rivals, former Senate Majority Leader Bernard Kenny and former Union City Mayor Rudy Garcia were invited to stand on the stage when Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy announced his re-election bid last week, and that the feud is getting so out of hand that a Stack endorsement of former Assemblyman Louis Manzo for Mayor is now a possibility.  Their best hope to avoid a Second World War between the two Hudson County Democrats may be to convince U.S. Senator Bob Menendez to mediate.

The two went at it two years ago when Healy, the Hudson County Democratic Chairman, backed West New York Mayor Sal Vega for Kenny's Senate seat.  Stack beat Vega in the primary by a 4-1 margin.  Garcia, who was tossed as Mayor and as an Assemblyman (Stack took his seat) after a public feud with Menendez, remains on the outs with the Union City powerbrokers.

Senate President Richard Codey says he will not invoke executive privilege in the investigation of the Property Tax Assistance and Community Development Grants program approved during his fourteen months as Governor, and said he will support the release of all documents.

"Although legally we have the right to invoke executive privilege, to the contrary we want this information to be released.  People have a right to know how their money is being spent.  I think the public will see, as they scrutinize these lists, that this money helped support many good causes,” Codey said. “The release of these documents will help clarify many questions surrounding the grant program.

In what could be one of the top political scandals of the year, the Senate Democratic budget staff testified in federal court today that at least two former legislators, Wayne Bryant and Bernard Kenny, each had $4 million in discretionary spending.  The Star-Ledger, reporting from Bryant's corruption trial, says that "masked by an obscure state budget account dedicated to property tax relief, key state lawmakers were given millions of taxpayer dollars to hand out to their constituents as they pleased, testimony in the corruption trial of former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Wayne Bryant revealed today.  The $40 million Property Tax Assistance and Community Development grants program lawmakers added to the state budgets in 2004 and 2005, was parceled out directly to individual lawmakers for them to spend on pet projects, George LeBlanc, Democratic budget officer, testified."

"To my knowledge, individual legislators were the deciders," LeBlanc told jurors, according to the Star-Ledger. "They were the ones who designated which entities would receive amounts of money from the accounts."

A witness at former State Sen. Wayne Bryant’s corruption trial gave what could amount to blockbuster testimony today, detailing a little-known practice that the legislature engaged in during 2004 and 2005.   

George LeBlanc, a Democratic budget aide, testified that a program ostensibly dedicated to property tax relief was used to hand out millions of dollars to key legislators to spend on pet projects hand out to their constituents, reports the Star-Ledger. 

According to the testimony, Bryant was allotted $4 million from the Property Tax Assistance and Community Development grants program.  The only other legislator named in the report is former State Sen. Bernard Kenny, who also was given $4 million. 

“The testimony contrasts with claims by lawmakers that individual grant recipients had to apply to the state Treasurer for funding from the $40 million pool, and that grants were awarded competitively,” reported Dunstan McNichol. 

Richard Codey will resign as Senate President on Monday so that Bernard Kenny can take the post for the final day of his twenty-year career in the Legislature, according to a report in Sunday’s Star-Ledger.  

The last time the Senate did that was in 1962. Robert Crane, a 40-year-old two-term Senator from Union County (and the publisher of the Elizabeth Daily Journal) was dying of cancer.  He was elected Senate President and resigned two hours later.  He died four months later.

The Senate Democrats have a new version of events that led to state police protection for lame duck Majority Leader Bernard Kenny: now it was Senate Majority Executive Director Kathleen Crotty – not Senate President Richard Codey or the bi-partisan State House Joint Management Commission, as originally reported – that authorized a State Trooper to drive Kenny between Hoboken and Trenton.  Initial reports identified Codey as the authorizing party, but then a Codey aide said it was the JMC.  After numerous inquiries by PolitickerNJ.com’s Matt Friedman, Senate Democrats then said it was Crotty.