Gerald McCann

If Jerramiah Healy wins re-election in 2009, he would become the first Democratic mayor of Jersey City to win a second consecutive four-year term since Thomas Whelan was re-elected in 1969.

Former Jersey City Mayor Gerald McCann is back: he won a school board race last week, fifteen years after being forced from office following his criminal conviction. He is due to take office on Monday, but the Jersey Journal is reporting that McCann is already calling for the ouster of Tom Favia, the head of the local teachers union.

Favia says the Jersey City Educaton Association spent $10,000 in support of three candidates -- incumbent Angel Valentin, former NBA player Terry Dehere, and Jenny Garcia. Valentin and Dehere won, but McCann beat Garcia by just 21 votes.

Add to that list of New Jersey disappearances including the arm of Chad Pennington, the glassworks of Trenton, and the Haunted Mansion of Long Branch the mysterious 2007 district 31 Senate candidacy of Sean Cotter.

Assemblyman Louis Manzo, himself a candidate for state Senate in district 31, says real estate developer Cotter told him Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy offered Cotter jobs in exchange for Cotter’s help in entering the Senate race as a spoiler. Healy -- who along with the Hudson County Democratic Organization -- backs Manzo’s chief rival Sandra Bolden Cunningham, calls the charge an outright falsehood.

Last Friday, on the same day Manzo said his legal team was going to make the information public in a Newark courtroom where Manzo was challenging the legitimacy of Cunningham’s primary petition, Cotter abruptly exited the Senate race with a fax to the state Division of Elections Office.

Former Jersey City Mayor Gerald McCann, who was forced to vacate his office in 1992 following his criminal conviction, lost narrowly leads in his bid for a political comeback in a race for the Jersey City Board of Education election.  He trailed Jenny Garcia by 53 votes on the machine count, but leads by 25 votes after absentee ballots were counted. The top votegetter was Terry Dehere, 35, who played for three NBA teams between 1993 and 1999. Incumbent Angel Valentin was re-elected.

Former Jersey City Mayor Anthony Cucci easily won re-election to his seat on the Board of Education this week. Cucci, defeated incumbent Gerald McCann in 1985 and then lost a rematch four years later, was the top vote-getter among the fourteen candidates for three seats. He ran way ahead of all other candidates.