Grace Spencer

ASSEMBLY PANEL CLEARS PACKAGE OF BILLS TO IMPROVE HOSPITAL EFFICIENCY, ACCOUNTABILITY

Measures Would Help To Stabilize Financial Health of State's Hospitals

(TRENTON) - The Assembly Health and Senior Services Committee today released a multi-bill legislative package aimed at stabilizing the long-term financial health of the state's hospital industry to stave-off future hospital closings.

The measures are sponsored by Assembly members Herb Conaway, MD, Ralph R. Caputo, Albert Coutinho, Jerry Green, Linda Greenstein, Gary Schaer, Grace Spencer, Connie Wagner, and Bonnie Watson Coleman.

Clinton supporter from left, U.S. Rep. Donald Payne, U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, and U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone

Mark Alexander assumed the familiar posture this week of a man with a phone in his hand making calls for presidential candidate Barack Obama. This time, however, the scenery was different, as he occupied unfamiliar territory on the other side of the Delaware River somewhere in a mid-western American state called Ohio, a rust-belt cousin of New Jersey.

"It’s raining," the former Jersey state director for the Obama campaign told PoltickerNJ.com in a 30-second conversation between calls, where Obama and his Democratic Party rival Sen. Hillary Clinton are competing today as well as in three other primary states: Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont.

SPENCER BILL REQUIRING PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD DURING SCHOOL BOARD MEETINGS PASSES ASSEMBLY

(TRENTON) - The General Assembly today passed legislation Assemblywoman L. Grace Spencer sponsored to require boards of education to designate a portion of every meeting for public comment.

Six of the last eight Governors of New Jersey launched their political careers by serving in the New Jersey State Assembly: William Cahill, Thomas Kean, James Florio, Donald DiFrancesco, James E. McGreevey, and Richard Codey. With that kind of historical precedent, is it possible that one of the 25 freshmen entering the Assembly on Tuesday could wind up living at Drumthwacket someday?

Senate President Richard Codey is seeking an African American woman to replace Mims Hackett in the State Assembly-- a move that could eliminate Black men from the Essex County Assembly delegation, and make State Senator Ronald Rice the only African American man in the Essex delegation.

Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo makes his stand

It’s the Paynes in the South Ward, the Adubatos in the North, two old families beating each other up with politics, while a young mayor in the middle hopes to assert his own will upon this city but in the meantime must pick a side.

No one gets out of Newark without picking a side.

Right now, the Paynes control that lifeline to the federal government in the person of U.S. Rep. Donald Payne, and hold sway in the Statehouse with older brother Assemblyman William Payne and his allies.

Founder of the North Ward Cultural and Educational Center, Adubato controls the city’s vital link to the county with Joseph DiVincenzo. DiVincenzo grew up in the North Ward, and was a star quarterback turned recreation supervisor for Adubato before becoming Essex County Executive. In addition to his own North Ward, Adubato controls the largely Portugese and Hispanic East Ward.

Mayor Cory Booker has organization of his own in the mostly African-American Central Ward, where he was a community activist before running for city council. And he also has a toehold in the South. But as usual Booker’s up against old Newark, and much of that African-American territory to southward is organized by the Paynes, and Ras Baraka, former councilman and son of the poet Amiri Baraka.

District 29 Assembly candidates Albert Coutinho and Grace Spencer this week received the endorsements of SEIU Local 32BJ, UniteHere! and CWA Local 1081, according to a news release isued by campaign spokesman Phil Alagia.

The New Jersey Education Association and the Newark Teachers Union -- longtime rival unions -- have joined forces to support the re-election campaigns of State Sen. Ron Rice, Assemblyman Craig Stanley and Assemblywoman Oadline Truitt in the 28th district, and Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo in the 29th.

Two New Jersey Congressmen are potentially vulnerable if they seek re-election in 2008 -- both in Democratic primaries.  Albio Sires, a former Assembly Speaker who took Bob Menendez's 13th district House seat last year, is knee-deep in an epic Hudson County Civil War; the freshman Congressman is actively backing his former running mate, Brian Stack, for the Democratic State Senate nomination in the 33rd district. Stack is running off the line against the Hudson County Democratic Organization against Sal Vega, his handpicked successor as Mayor of West New York and as an Assemblyman. He's also backing Assemblyman Louis Manzo for State Senate against the HCDO candidate, Sandra Bolden Cunningham.

Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo has nailed down the endorsement of U.S. Rep. Donald Payne, and is using pictures of himself with Payne in campaign literature as he fights the power structure that spit him out after he bucked the bosses last year.

"He told me he didn’t believe he could sit on the sidelines, and he thought my record and my tenure made my re-election important," said Caraballo, speaker pro tempore in the Assembly. "He made it a very personal thing."

He’s been around long enough to know people get punched hard in this business, but Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo from district 29, the third ranking member in the Assembly and the highest ranking Latino, finds it no less difficult to fight off his anger.

"I wouldn’t change my vote, no, no way," he says. "I have absolutely no regrets about that vote."

It was the sales tax increase proposed during the budget season last year.

The governor wanted the Essex County delegation to vote for it but Caraballo didn’t do it, arguing the tax would unfairly impact his constituents, particularly those making minimum wage or less. Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo didn’t appreciate that, and neither did the governor.