Frank Raia

Acting Mayor/Council President Dawn Zimmer, second from right, with her family on Election Day last May.

Observers see the challengers damaging one another in Hoboken, making Acting Mayor Dawn Zimmer the front-running favorite, but regardless of who they back, Hobokenites have been struck by the serious intentions of longtime 3rd Ward work horse Frank Raia. 

If it were a contest with run-off potential, it would be different - more obviously competive. But this is a race where the top vote-getter wins, and sources say Zimmer's base is mostly intact as she tries to stare down 2nd Ward Councilwoman Beth Mason, retired municipal judge Kimberly Glatt and supermarket owner Raia, among others, including Republican Nathan Brinkman. 

As was the case when she ran for mayor in May, Mason has dumped the biggest expenditures into this contest - $220,250 and counting, according to the state Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC).

But Raia's not far behind, shoveling more than $200,000 into his own effort, killing the stalking horse talk that trailed him at the start of the campaign.

A late starter in the race, Glatt has raised $33,300 to Zimmer's $35,864, but their filings were made earlier in the month than Mason's and Raia's.

Kimberly Glatt in front of her Hoboken headquarters on Tuesday evening.

HOBOKEN - Tired of sending their mayors here in front of judges, the voters should simply save a lot of people - 40,500, or roughly the population of Hoboken - a lot of trouble and heartache and simply make a judge mayor, or at least that's what the backers of Kimberly Glatt believe. 

The 44-year-old mayoral candidate opened her campaign headquarters this evening at Washington and Sixth Street as a late-start challenger to Acting Mayor Dawn Zimmer, who became the chief elected official here after Peter Cammarano resigned amid federal corruption charges.

Zimmer doesn't impress Glatt, who served in her native city of Hoboken for 14 years before retiring just before the September deadline to run for mayor.

"I had a chance to work in City Hall for six weeks under this mayor, and I don't sense any focus - from the top down," said Glatt. "An example? I spent 14 years creating a security plan for the city, and without even asking me about it, it was undone."

Dawn Zimmer, sworn into office as Acting Mayor on the day Peter Cammarano resigned.

Power and how to wield it is a conversational topic that might have faraway associations in a more quaint setting, but it generally arises with a fiercer kind of immediacy and urgency in a place where two of a town's last three mayors endured the clamp of handcuffs - a place, for example, like Hoboken.

Starting from City Hall, photographer turned Acting Mayor Dawn Zimmer commands the power projection platform in a race in which the self-styled reformer mayor faces a challenge from no fewer than seven opponents - including 2nd Ward Councilwoman Beth Mason, retired Judge Kimberly Glatt and businessman Frank "Pupie" Raia, who all believe Zimmer doesn't have the temperament to wield a mayor's power.
 
Whatever their private agonies about Zimmer and their public ambitions, that many people trying to elbow one another out of the way in a play for voters' attention in a short time-frame election, makes the contest ostensibly Zimmer v. Mason, according to most observers - with the strong edge going to Zimmer early as the incumbent who has her own built-in, green T-shirted base of support.
 
But sources say Glatt and Raia intend to talk this week to ascertain whether it would be better for one of the two born-and-raised candidates - traditionally a plus in this parochial Hudson River burgh - to exit the race and back the other in the name of consolidating an alternative to Zimmer and Zimmer's financially-well connected arch-rival Mason, neither of whom has Hoboken roots.

Don't count on Raia leaving the contest.

"I am running to win," the owner of the Hoboken Shop Rite told PolitickerNJ.com. "I feel I'm the only candidate who can deal with old and new Hoboken."

Photo courtesy of Paul Swibinski

2nd Ward Councilwoman Beth Mason at her kickoff tonight with daughters Shipley and Virginia.

Updated 

HOBOKEN - Those exhausted by head-to-head Hoboken politics will have to gut out yet another round in the aftermath of Mayor Peter Cammarano's late July fall down, which cleared the way for now-Acting Mayor Dawn Zimmer and 2nd Ward Councilwoman Beth Mason to recharge, reset and redo.

Zimmer hopes the result of an encounter with Mason will be the same as last time, when she quickened the Mason campaign's May meltdown and earned a berth in the runoff with Cammarano, which she lost by fewer than 200 votes.

Cammarano subsequently exited, resigning the mayor's office amid federal bribery charges - and now Mason's back, arguing that she has the best professional profile and public record to deliver a real era of reform to Hoboken - and a plan to win this time.

She formally kicked off her campaign tonight at the Brass Rail, chastising Zimmer for losing her way in the thicket of City Hall.   

Councilwoman Beth Mason

HOBOKEN - With just Councilman Peter Cammarano and Councilwoman Dawn Zimmer the only declared mayoral candidates to date and two months until Election Day, Hoboken has the makings of a political battleground.    

A poll taken last month by American Research Surveys for a group of prominent Democratic Party members determined that Councilwoman Beth Mason leads the field in the mayor’s race, followed by Councilman Peter Cammarano and Dawn Zimmer, who statistically tie for second.

Cammarano improves his standing in the poll when emphasizing his opposition to the state takeover of the mile square city's budget, but a majority of voters polled are undecided about who should succeed Mayor David Roberts. 

Of 250 voters polled, Mason received 17% in the “hard support” category, followed by Zimmer with 9% and Cammarano with 8%. 

HOBOKEN - Perry Belfiore will sit out the municipal races next year in Hoboken, where a state monitor has taken over the city's embattled financial situation. He won’t run for mayor and he won’t run for any of the three at-large seats. 

“What are you kidding me? I borrowed $9,000 for my last campaign, and had to get out a second mortgage on our second home,” he told PolitickerNJ.com. “Every time I mention politics, my wife reminds me how much my hobby costs us. $9,000. So that’s where it’s at. I will be roasting, toasting and hosting but I will not be embroiled.” 

Befiore ran against Peter Cunningham in the fifth ward last year. Cunningham beat him by 104 votes in a runoff election.

Hoboken Councilwoman Beth Mason: Politicker photo 

HOBOKEN - Taking a nod from Jersey City Councilman Steve Fulop, freshman Hoboken Councilwoman Beth Mason intends to introduce an amendment that would ban city elected officials from receiving more than one public salary or pension.

"I am sure that Councilman Fulop recognizes, as do I, how difficult it is to create a more responsive and responsible government when the primary interest of many elected officials lies in perpetuating a cumbersome, costly bureaucracy that rewards the few, at the expense of the many," Mason said.

Elected last year to fill a vacant seat in the city’s second ward, Mason - like Fulop in Jersey City - is a likely 2009 mayoral candidate.

The Jersey Journal has endorsed outsiders in three contested Democratic primaries for Hudson County Freeholder.  They are backing former Acting Hudson County Clerk Mary Jane Desmond, an ex-Bayonne City Councilwoman, against the Hudson County Democratic Organization incumbent Doreen McAndrew DiDomenico in District 1.  Also running is David Longenhagen.

When Jersey City Detective Sean Connors took on the task of running against North Bergen Mayor Nick Sacco for the state Senate seat in the 32nd District last year, he really had his eye on a different position: 4th District Freeholder.

Connors, 39, expected that he'd have the backing of powerful Union City Mayor/state Sen. Brian Stack in exchange for undertaking that kamikaze mission on Stack's rivals at the Hudson County Democratic Organization (HCDO). But now, with a tenuous semi-peace holding between Stack and the HCDO, Connors is alone in his freeholder fight against incumbent Eliu Rivera. Even without that support, Connors has surprised local political insiders by running a truly competitive campaign.