Bill Stephens

Edison Mayor Jun Choi outside one of his favorite haunts in his hometown.

EDISON – His town’s paved over compared to some of the more quaint rural reaches of the Garden State, but Mayor Jun Choi of Edison never had the luxury of acting like a politician who can stand on an unbreakable political foundation. 

He’s running for re-election next year, and this one will be no give-me for the first-term mayor who ran as an underdog the first time and despite the advantage he enjoys as an incumbent, can probably still claim the underdog brand as he squares off against a regenerated opposition. 

There are three council members up for re-election in 2009, and they are all prospective mayoral candidates: Council President Robert Diehl, Councilwoman Antonia Ricigliano, and Councilman Anthony Massaro.  

If it sounds like an easy divide and conquer opportunity for an incumbent with especially good name ID and blue collar celebrity status whose change-time election three years ago made the national magazine circuit, it’s actually not. 

EDISON - Diners anchor what’s left of the train-track and warehouseEdison Mayor Jun Choi: Politicker file photo girded countryside in this sprawling town, fifth biggest in New Jersey, where Mayor Jun Choi drinks his coffee on a summer morning in one of the more recognizable roadside haunts called the Plaza Diner.

The suit and tie and modest demeanor belie a man restlessly at work, for if Choi was an enigmatic upstart when he hit the scene three years ago, he has built himself into a surging political force, three-fourths of the way into his first term.

"And I’m running again," he says with a smile.

The Edison-raised kid who came from the inner sanctum of Bill Bradley’s machine-bucking 2000 presidential campaign, former state Department of Education wonk, Choi remains the Democratic Party outsider in a party that still does not know quite what to do with him.