CHARLOTTE DEFILIPPO

School Board member Andre Daniels, Noemi Excobar and Jeffrey Dykes

HILLSIDE – Seated in his campaign headquarters on Maple Avenue, Andre Daniels looks like a mayor, and given the invitation to bash the other three people in the race he grins gravitas tinged with good humor and says only, “Andre Daniels is ready to be mayor.” 

His rivals believe he made a fatal error pouring a lot of his campaign dollars into a big, spacious, professional-looking headquarters rather than focusing on a nimbler, door-to-door operation, and he’s dogged by at least two setbacks, but Daniels claims he has a full-deck operation and is confident of victory on May 12. 

Running as a “change” candidate and the antidote to the DeFilippo-McCoy Oliver power struggle and a critic of 16% raises issued to municipal department heads, the three-year School Board member says, “This town used to be a wonderful place to raise families, but it’s devolved into the political classes driving personal agendas and personal issues. If I’m elected, I will start with a forensic audit of the budget and hire a business administrator. My longer-term goal is to bring in business and lower taxes. This office we’re sitting in right now will be a mini-town hall where residents will be able to contribute to the decision-making process.”

HILLSIDE – Councilman Jerome Jewell heads up a street in the 2nd Ward on foot and a kid walking up the middle of same street calls out to him, “Sir!” and Jewell waves back and he looks confident but the other candidates circle in this mayor’s race, sensing the end of an empire in his every step.

It’s nothing personal against Jewell, a detective with the Newark Police Department who works in the evidence processing department and whose face now circulates throughout the streets on a mailer that reads: “Fearless: Jerome Jewell. …After the planes hit the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, Jerome Jewell was one of the first officers to cross the Hudson to search for survivors. Twenty years of protecting people made him know Ground Zero was where he had to be.” 

To his three energized rivals in the mayor’s race, Jewell just happens to be the latest knight errand saddled up by a Democratic establishment helmed by Union County Democratic Chairwoman Charlotte DeFilippo, the local power broker who runs the council and wants Jewell to succeed the off-the-rails mayoralty of Karen McCoy Oliver.

Joe Menza

Hillside – When mayoral candidate Joe Menza walked into Hurden-Looker Elementary yesterday to vote in the School Board Election, he noticed the gym floor had buckled in the rain.

“That floor was redone just this year,” said Menza. “They didn’t slope it away from the door to avoid a problem like this. Of course, you’re looking at a building that was built in 1924.”

One project’s apparent failure notwithstanding, “If you don’t put money into these schools, you’re going to suffer long-term,” said Menza, who went head-to-head with the local Democratic organization last night in the School Board election and won.

His three candidates – cousin Angela Menza, Shelby Robinson and Daniel Santos – defeated a slate backed by the organization and aligned with presumptive mayoral favorite Councilman Jerome Jewell.

“It was a good day,” said Menza. “Our three candidates won last year, too.”

Joe Menza

UPDATED*** 

HILLSIDE - Outraged that the township clerk is preventing him from appearing with his running mates on the May 12th ballot and citing the handiwork of Union County Democratic Party Chairwoman Charlotte DeFilippo as the reason, Hillside mayoral candidate Joe Menza has sued the Township of Hillside.

Absorbing the news today, an unimpressed DeFilippo hit back at the real estate developer candidate, charging him with having a “cavalier attitude” about the law, in a fast-unfolding skirmish between the independent brand Menza and the Democratic Party, scheduled to spill into Union County Judge William Wertheimer’s courtroom this Friday for a summary judgment hearing. 

“The clerk’s office, under the direction of the political boss Charlotte DeFilippo, is attempting to thwart the electoral process,” seethed Menza, who said Clerk Janet S. Vlaisavljevic broke up his slates on orders from above. “We must go to the courts to have our team together on the ballot because of technical knit-picking.  This tactic is straight out of the DeFilippo playbook.”

Frustrated by over a decade of failing to win a single seat on the freeholder board, Union County Republicans are circulating a petition that would allow county residents to vote on whether they want to change the way freeholders are elected. 

Union County Republican Chairman Phil Morin said last month that he would like to see at least a few of the county's nine freeholder seats change from being elected at large to a district-based system.  That way, the county's suburban, traditionally Republican leaning towns would not be drowned out by larger Democratic cities in the eastern end of the county.  Morin, however, asserted that it is about geographic representation, not partisanship, and that there are Democrats supporting the effort as well. 

"Many large areas of the county go completely unrepresented.  Creating a district-based system would provide a fairer distribution," he said.  ‘I think people will recognize that the freeholder board is essentially appointees of Club Charlotte [DeFillippo] and that all the residents of Union County would be best served by having equal representation throughout the county."

Walter Long, the former mayor of historically Republican Summit, brought up the idea of secession starting in the 1990s, after Republicans went from having a majority on the freeholder board to having no members, and in 2002, the town's council commissioned a study that toyed with the idea because, they argued, they were getting a tiny proportion of county services compared to what they were paying in taxes.

Anne "Little Chris" Milgram has been on a roll lately, announcing six politically relevant indictments in the last two weeks.  With the exception of Assemblyman Joseph Vas (D-Perth Amboy), the others are relatively minor players: Antonio Santana, who allegedly falsified three absentee ballots in Newark; former Perth Amboy Democratic Chairman Raymond Geneske; two former Vas aides, Melvin Ramos and Jeffrey Gumbs; and Rosemary McClave, the Treasurer for the and Neil Cohen's campaign treasurer.

There is some speculation that the indictment of the 66-year-old McClave might be more about her longtime political alliance with fellow Hillside resident Charlotte DeFilippo than about allegations that she used Cohen's campaign account to pay for $5,562 in personal expenses charged to an American Express card.  According to published reports, Milgram's office has spent the last two years looking at top Union County officials, including DeFilippo, the Executive Director of the Union County Improvement Authority.

Councilman Jerome Jewell

HILLSIDE – Here it comes – a Hillside free-for-all. 

Sources close to Councilman Jerome Jewell say he will formally enter the race for mayor sometime in the next two weeks. The long-serving Newark detective will run with the backing of the local Democratic Party organization. 

But there’s still political oxygen out there that at least two other candidates are trying to gobble up in the apparent aftermath of the troubled tenure of Mayor Karen McCoy-Oliver, niece of the late Assemblyman Willie Brown, who has not publicly declared her intentions regarding reelection.  

Whatever she does, McCoy-Oliver’s well-publicized head-butting episodes with powerful local party leader Charlotte DeFilippo have made the mayor an off-the-line contender at best now as Jewel commands the organization’s backing.

Hillside At-large Councilman Jerome Jewell prepares for Tuesday evening's council meeting.

HILLSIDE – Crammed between highways in an industrial terrain just beyond the grip of two oxygen-hoarding metropolises to north and south, Hillside has that forgotten city feeling, as if residing within its limits between Newark and Elizabeth were actually the ultimate New Jersey emblem of honor, where the ironic allusion to being disrespected comes with a special appreciation of big and rough edges.  

Indeed, if Newark can claim to be the triumphant birthplace of Red Badge of Courage author Stephen Crane, Hillside was handed the unhappy task of burying the 28-year old wunderkind in the local cemetery. 

Peruse the names of native silver screen personalities, and Hillside fares no better.  Newarkers can brag of living in the birthplace of tough guys like Ray Liota and Joe Pesci while Hillside provided the early stomping grounds for the brilliant if largely unknown actor Michael Gazzo, whose claim to fame was getting bumped off in the Godfather II.

In Plainfield and Hillside, sources say two African-American women will be running for reelection to the mayor’s race next year, one with the backing of the Democratic Party and the other in opposition to the machine.    

First, in Hillside, sources say incumbent Mayor Karen McCoy Oliver and Union County Democratic Chair Charlotte DiFilippo will likely not make peace before next year’s May election.   

They’re both dug in on this one.    

DiFilippo lives in Hillside and has served as municipal party chair for 36 years. Oliver would be pursuing her third term in office.

Assemblywoman Linda Stender says she has her party's support to seek another term

Assemblywoman Linda Stender (D-Fanwood) said today that she intends to run for re-election to the assembly in 2009.

“My immediate plan is to seek another term to the legislature, and I have great support from the state chair, my county chair, and I’ve got very good working relationships with my delegation members,” she said. “There’s a lot of important work to be done, we’re in a tough time in our economy and state and I’ll be looking forward to taking on those challenges.”

An Inside Edge report from just before the election said that a Union County Democratic official suggested that the party would try to get Stender to step aside if she lost the House race. But Stender said today that she has not felt any pressure to leave her seat.