David Roberts

Mayor David Roberts

HOBOKEN – Talk to the street players and they tell you Mayor David Roberts will run again next year, but talk to the man and he won’t reveal his intentions in what looms as a big battle, within a crucible of financial unrest.

“I have not been entertaining conversations about the upcoming mayor’s race,” Roberts told PolitickerNJ.com. “I’ve got other issues: the movie theater, the clock tower.”

But he concedes those are props in this unfolding drama, where the massive issue remains the fact that a state monitor assumed responsibility for the city’s finances. Taxes in Hoboken have ballooned in a government effort to collect $12 million in reserve accounts or to make up for money that otherwise couldn’t be accounted for in city coffers.

Roberts acknowledges the issue with pain in his voice.

Hoboken’s 2nd Ward Councilwoman Beth Mason is trying to carve out  a reputation for filing lawsuits in the pursuit of “open government” –  to date filing at least eleven such suits over access to public records.

But yesterday, the New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously smacked down  Mason – who has filed 125 separate requests for public records from the  City of Hoboken, saying those who seek records must do so in timely  manner. In the Court’s unanimous ruling, Chief Justice Stuart Rabner wrote of Mason’s 17 requests for city records – including every single  financial transaction by the City of Hoboken in 2003 and 2004: "Citizens  are entitled to swift access to public records, and both the public and  governmental bodies are logically entitled to have any disputes brought  and addressed in the same, rapid manner."

In the sea of Hudson County politics, all of those beleaguered sailors set adrift out there in the face of June 5th, Election Day, depending on their loyalties either fear or embrace the perfect storm, envisioned by that upstart pirate skipper Brian P. Stack.

Stack, the mayor of Union City and an Assemblyman, jumped out in front of the Hudson County Democratic Organization when he announced his intentions of supplanting State Sen. Bernie Kenny, who later said formally he would retire.

Now Stack is favored to win the Democratic Primary in the 33rd District, which includes Union City, West New York, Weehawken, Hoboken, Guttenberg and part of Jersey City. He already has an ally in Weehawken Mayor Richard Turner. The candidate’s also pumped money into the municipal re-election bids of the young Turks in Hoboken, who are restlessly jockeying for position to succeed Mayor David Roberts.

Hoboken Mayor David Roberts’ decision not to seek re-election to a third term in 2009 has created a war among candidates in six council races to be decided Tuesday, with all of the contestants either beating up the mayor -- or the mayor before him -- in a bid to ultimately be the next mayor or power player.

The vacuum at the top of the city is complicated by the impending retirement of District State Sen. Bernard Kenny, the Hudson County Democratic Chairman, who has been a long-time ally and go-to guy for Roberts.

Feeling the pressure from gadfly citizens who say the city has not completed important projects, a City Council presenting itself as equally outraged is pinning the blame on the mayor, who in turn is kicking himself for making the announcement last year that he wouldn’t be pursuing re-election.

The buzz in Hudson County this week is about Assemblyman/Union City Mayor Brian Stack's very public flirtation with a challenge to Senate Majority Leader (and Hudson County Democratic Chairman) Bernard Kenny in the 2007 primary. There has been speculation for months that Kenny, who has been battling prostate cancer and other health issues, had been considering retirement anyway -- but some of Kenny's friends think Stack's aggressive tone could make a Kenny re-election bid even more likely.

Even though Kenny is the incumbent and the party chairman, some Hudson pols say that the ambitious Stack could have the edge in a primary. He is enormously popular in Union City, where he began his political career as a rival of Bob Menendez and then became Menendez's ally in a fight with Rudy Garcia, and some local pols say that he could carry his hometown by a margin of almost 4-1. Kenny comes from Hoboken, where his strong alliance with Mayor David Roberts could allow Stack to team up with an anti-Roberts Democrat -- maybe a backer of former Councilwoman Carol Marsh, who forced Roberts into a runoff in 2005. In that case, West New York -- where local leadership will shift in November when Mayor/Assemblyman Albio Sires takes his seat in Congress -- might determine the outcome of a 33rd district Democratic primary. Some say Kenny might be at a disadvantage given the traditional North Hudson alliance between Union City and West New York.

In Hudson County, where all politics truly is local, power has traditionally rested with the twelve Democratic Mayors. In 1977, the incumbent Democratic State Chairman, James Dugan, lost his bid for a third term in the State Senate when the winner of the Jersey City mayoral election decided to support Walter Sheil instead.