CHARLOTTE DEFILIPPO

Joe Menza of Hillside

HILLSIDE - It's good news early for the team of mayoral candidate Joe Menza's, who's generating solid numbers in his stronghold.

If At-Large Councilman Jerome Jewell's campaign nurses worry, it's over the weather. If it rains, and rains hard in the after-work hours, they're concerned that the core of their voters might not flood the polls as they've planned.

This is likely a close election. Menza missed by 208 votes in his 2005 challenge. He came in second behind Jewell on May 12th to make the runoff, winning 1,167 to Jewell's 1,368. Both sides believe they're now working a universe of about 2,800 to 2,900 likely voters in this election.

Menza has good command of the senior vote in Hillside, but the African-American working class is Jewell's bet, and so he and his campaign workers keep looking up at the sky, trying to discern what the clouds are doing or will do with the passage of time.

They stifle laughter at the suggestion that Menza could win. They believe the independent real estate developer who's running against Union County Democratic Committee Chairwoman Charlotte DeFilippo and her candidate, Jewell, made a boneheaded miscalculation when he allowed GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie to do a robocall on Menza's behalf.

Runoffs in Hoboken, Hillside and Jersey City will dominate politics in New Jersey today. These races are technically non-partisan, although in some cases party organizations are playing an important role in these races.

Councilwoman Dawn Zimmer and Councilman Peter Cammarano meet in a runoff to become the 37th Mayor of Hoboken.  The two-term incumbent, David Roberts, did not seek re-election.

Zimmer was the top vote getter in the May municipal election four weeks ago, edging out Cammarano by 212 votes, 3,614-3,402.  Councilwoman Beth Mason, who finished third in a field of six candidates with 2,330 votes, has endorsed Zimmer.  The Hudson County Democratic establishment, and Senate President Richard Codey, has endorsed Cammarano, who is an attorney at the firm of Democratic power lawyer Angelo Genova.

Three Hoboken City Council seats will also be decided in today's runoff election.  Ravi Bhalla, Carl Marsh and Dave Mello, running with Zimmer, face Cammarano's running mates, Vinny Addeo, Angel Alicea, and Raul Morales.  Addeo and Morales originally ran with Mason.

In Hillside, Councilman Jerome Jewell and businessman Joseph Menza compete in a runoff for Mayor.  Last month, Jewell led Menza by 201 votes, 1,368-1,167 in a field of four candidates  Jewell has the strong backing of Hillside Democratic Municipal Chair Charlotte DeFilippo, who is the Union County Democratic Chair.  The Democratic Governors Association has put $10,400 into this campaign.  Three Councils seats are also up for grabs. Mayor Karen McCoy Oliver is not seeking re-election.

In Jersey City, where Mayor Jerramiah Healy won a landslide re-election last month, two incumbents who ran on the Healy slate will compete in a runoff election for City Council seats.  Ward A Councilman Michael Sottolano faces Rolando Lavarro, and Ward F Councilwoman Viola Richardson is challenged by Ronnie-Calvin Clark.  Lavarro and Clark ran with mayoral candidate Louis Manzo.

Two Republican County Chairmen are fighting to keep their jobs tonight.  In Gloucester County, incumbent Loran Oglesby faces Bill Fey, and in Passaic County, Assemblyman Scott Rumana (R-Wayne) is seeking re-election against Carl Mazzie, a Totowa attorney allied with former GOP County Chairmen Peter Murphy and Michael Mecca.

Salem County Republican Chairman Paul Reed has decided not to run for another term.  Former Freeholder Michael Facemyer is running unopposed for the post

Word on the "internet street" has it that all the "King Street Men" supposedly are busy gathering cash for Union County Democratic Committee Chairwoman Charlotte DeFilippo's legal defense fund. Served with subpoenas in October 2007 to produce documents pertaining to both her personal business dealings and those of the Union County Improvement Authority; Charlotte the Director, crowed that in no time flat everyone would be apologizing to her for the inconvenience of the investigation.. "I've been involved in politics for 35 years, and I do it in the most aboveboard and transparent manner," she was quoted in the Star Ledger as having said. "I just want to know who's going to say, 'Sorry, Charlotte' when this is all over."

The Mid-Atlantic Democratic Leadership Fund, which has already spent $900,000 on network television ads attacking GOP gubernatorial candidate Christopher Christie, today bought another $300,000 in TV ads that will begin airing tomorrow and run through next Monday.  The group is reportedly allied with the Democratic Governors Association (DGA).  The DGA is also involved in the non-partisan Hillside mayoral race, where they have put $10,300 into the campaign of Jerome Jewell, an ally of Union County Democratic Chair Charlotte DeFilippo.

This is probably a bigger story than people realize: the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) has contributed $10,400 to one of the two candidates in a non-partisan June 9 runoff election for Mayor of Hillside.  What makes this interesting is that the recipient of the rather substantial contribution, Jerome Jewell, is the preferred candidate of Charlotte DeFilippo, who serves as both the Hillside Democratic Municipal Chair and the Union County Democratic Chair. 

The DGA is under no legal obligation to report their donors, has no limits on campaign contributions, and can take money from individuals or corporations who, for a variety of reasons, cannot contribute in New Jersey.

In addition to their concern over the Hillside mayoral race, the DGA is also playing in the Republican gubernatorial primary.  An allied group, the Mid-Atlantic Democratic Leadership Fund, is spending a reported $900,000 on network TV ads attacking Christopher Christie, one of the three candidates seeking the Republican nomination for Governor. 

From left: Joe Menza, Councilwoman Shelley Bates, and former School Board member Andre Daniels

The two losing mayoral candidates and their supporting casts intend to back real estate developer Joe Menza over At-Large Councilman Jerome Jewell in the Hillside muncipal runoff, according to Councilwoman Shelley Bates and a spokesman for former School Board member Andre Daniels. 

Menza’s an independent. 

Jewell has the backing of the local Democratic Party headed by Union County Democratic Party Chair Charlotte DeFilippo.

“Of the two candidates who are running, I definitely support Joe Menza,” said Bates, a grassroots Democrat and Obama activist whose running mate, former School Board member Sip Whitaker, was the target of a mailer initiated in the final days of the campaign by the Jewell organization, highlighting a domestic battery charge from the 1980s.

Would you believe this is Victor Scudiery?

PolitickerNJ.com strongly stands by our report that State Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Elizabeth) and Democratic State Chairman Joseph Cryan (D-Union) are involved with a legal defense fund for Union County Democratic Chair Charlotte DeFilippo, despite denials by Monmouth County Democratic Chairman Victor Scudiery.

"I've known Charlotte for years. She's a friend of mine. She called and asked me to help her and I agreed. I don't know where the Lesniak and Cryan stuff is coming from," Scudiery, the Treasurer for the legal defense fund, told the editor of moremonmouthmusings.com, a political web site. "Charlotte sends me the checks and when there are bills to pay I pay them out of the fund."

It's possible, according to sources familiar with the fund, that Scudiery doesn't know who is raising the money to pay DeFilippo's legal bills. 

UnionCountyDems.org

Union County Democratic Chairwoman Charlotte DeFilippo

Some prominent Democrats have set up a trust to pay the legal expenses of Union County Democratic Chairwoman Charlotte DeFilippo, who is under investigation by the State Attorney General's Office.

State Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Elizabeth), Assemblyman Joseph Cryan (D-Union) and Monmouth County Democratic Chairman Victor Scudiery are organizing and administering the fund, according to two sources.

In November, 2007, The Star-Ledger reported that the Attorney General's office subpoenaed documents relating to DeFilippo's "public and private business dealings" - including documents from the Union County Improvement Authority, which she heads; information on her duties as a legislative aide to former Assemblyman Neil Cohen, who has since been indicted on child pornography charges; documents relating to the Union County Democrats' involvement in the 2006 Roselle primary; and a client list a financial records from Camelot Title Agency, in which DeFilippo and Cryan hold minority stakes.

Councilwoman Shelley Bates, far right, and her team (Sip Whitaker, beside her, Beverly Lynn and Leonard Dupree) discuss issues with resident Camille Haynes.

HILLSIDE – Franklin Street runs parallel to Liberty Avenue, and 2nd Ward Councilwoman Shelley Bates and her team walk it old school, targeting the grassroots councilwoman’s base voters in disciplined fashion. 

“I see great potential in Hillside and I have invested in Hillside for most of my life,” says Bates, 40, a state worker in the communications division with private sector communications and marketing experience.

She ran and beat the local Democratic Party machine on local issues in 2007, simultaneously defeating current rival, independent Joe Menza, among others. In office as she championed good government reforms like televised council meetings and pay-to-play checks. She collected signatures last year to get Barack Obama on the Democratic Primary ballot, and now Bates runs for mayor on the Obama wave with the additional springboard of her own relatively recent victory. 

Joe Menza outside his office on Liberty Avenue

HILLSIDE – Plastered over with signs and backed up under Highway 22 stands Joe Menza’s campaign headquarters, just one more feature on a cluttered streetscape that on its worst days looks as though it fell through the porous surfaces of the overhead highways at this last edge of Union County with Newark on the other side of newly erected road barriers. 

One wrong turn here can deadend you on a loading dock of some reject factory from the rust belt era, and as for Menza, he’s done nothing but buy properties and squash projects onto lots too small to sustain them, Democratic Party boss Charlotte DeFilippo charges of the mayoral candidate, who’s challenging her candidate Jerome Jewell.

Menza’s used to the complaints, and he anticipates a barrage over the course of the next few days prior to Election Day on May 12th. 

“That’s what they tried to do to me in the last mayoral campaign, turn in me into the big bad developer, and now all the candidates are saying we need development in town. There’s been no development in this town for 30 years,” he says, sitting in his office on Liberty Avenue.