Hoboken

HOBOKEN - Dawn Zimmer and Peter Cammarano are headed for a runoff election here, according to unofficial results from the Hudson County Clerk.

Zimmer received 3,614 votes (36.19%) to Cammarano's 3,402 (34.07%).

Beth Mason failed to make the runoff election, having received 2,330 votes or 23.33%. (Absentee ballot totals recorded later put Cammarano ahead of Zimmer, 3,755 to 3,671 votes, with Mason receiving 2,541 votes).

Councilwoman Dawn Zimmer, her husband, their children, and her parents, campaign near the PATH station this evening.

HOBOKEN – With two hours to go and the candidates working it as the ferries and trains arrive under the Clock Tower overloaded with potential voters, a storm comes up suddenly and threatens to short circuit the final lap of this campaign.

People walk with their hands over their eyes to protect themselves from the dust kicked into the air and it’s shocking to anyone who never thought bad weather would be a factor, even if everything else would be in play.

Whoever planned to go vote on the way home surely now has only an overriding desire to get indoors as fast as possible and to stay there, but then a few minutes later, the threat of a storm is over, and everyone reverts to the earlier get-out-the-vote game plan.

2nd Ward Councilwoman Beth Mason campaigns near the ferry. Mike Novak, a candidate for the city council on a slate with At-Large Councilman Peter Cammarano, works a street corner in the 4th Ward.

Mason campaign headquarters.

HOBOKEN - A 2 p.m. gutcheck taken by City Clerk Jimmy Farina showed that of the city's 28,000 registered voters, 5,303 had voted in the municipal race here today. 

A Cammarano fan on Washington Street.

HOBOKEN – Here it is at midday in the Hoboken mayor’s contest and no one looks like he or she has broken a cellphone yet in despair as all three of the big ticket players’ operations appear competive.

The campaign headquarters of Beth Mason and Peter Cammarano look particularly active. 

At Cammarano central on Washington Street, there’s a room in the back and phone bankers sit at tables and go through their call lists. Out front, Cammarano soldiers in white t-shirts ask passersby if they’ve voted.

“He’s worked all his life for this,” the at-large councilman’s mother says of her son. She’s in from Vermont to help her son get elected.  

Next door at a sidewalk café, three green-shirted workers for the Zimmer Team are feeding quietly. When they finish and walk past, they don’t exchange words with Cammarano’s people.

Hoboken Clerk Jimmy Farina poses with some of his memorablia at City Hall.

HOBOKEN – The streets have slowed here since this morning but one man keeps on the move: City Clerk Jimmy Farina, who is as analogous to Hoboken on Election Day as was Dino to Ol' Blue Eyes.   

“I’ve been working mayoral elections since 1984, when I started this job,” said Farina. “So far, even this morning, I didn’t get the sense that turnout was high. A little after 4 p.m. I’ll take a reading on where we are in terms of voter turnout but right now, based on what I saw down at the Firehouse early, turn out’s comparatively low.”

Six candidates are running for mayor of the mile-square city” At-Large Councilman Peter Cammarano, 2nd Ward Councilwoman Beth Mason, 4th Ward Councilwoman Dawn Zimmer, tech head Tom Vincent, financial consultant Ryn Melberg, and broker Frank Orsini.

Ravi Bhalla

The race for the mayor of Hoboken features a field of six candidates, three of whom have received the most press attention owing to their continuing brawls on the council amid the ruins of this city’s finances.

At-Large Councilman Peter Cammarano put together a slate of teammates that hit all the requisite chords given the temper of the times – a Latino (Union City cop Angel Alicia), a financial expert (Mike Novak), and a School Board member who presumably cares about kids in a town where the number of drunken revelers on a Friday night is outdone only by the number of baby carriages on Saturday morning (Francis Rhodes-Kearns).

Cammarano, an elections lawyer who learned his trade in the school of old pro Angelo Genova, has financial support from key Democratic Party fundraisers and is the candidate most likely to entice the backing of the Hudson County Democratic Organization (HCDO) in the event that outfit secures the re-election of its chief, Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy – and in the event that Cammarano makes the runoff.

Perth Amboy Mayor Wilda Diaz

HOBOKEN - Not many elected officials have announced their support for a given mayoral candidate in this intensified contest with no obvious favorite, but this week Perth Amboy Mayor Wilda Diaz threw her name behind 2nd Ward Councilwoman Beth Mason.

Energized by the prospect of a woman in office in the square mile city, while also recognizing Raul Morales, one of Mason’s three running mates, the Middlesex mayor wrote a letter to voters on Mason’s behalf.

Diaz last year shocked the New Jersey political establishment when she upended longtime Mayor Joe Vas, who was indicted earlier this year by the state Attorney General’s Office on theft and bid-rigging charges.

2nd Ward Councilwoman Beth Mason

HOBOKEN – Councilwoman Beth Mason’s just left her campaign headquarters, and if anyone ever needed evidence that big money moves in and out of this narrow front door, in her absence, the candidate’s mobile face on a flat screen TV speaks to passersby on Washington Avenue. 

She’s on cable TV, too, and a Brian P. Stack-sized banner hangs on the side of campaign headquarters. Overlooking Washington Avenue in fullblown Diego Rivera glory stand Mason and her three crusading running mates. 

Circulating on these same streets, meanwhile, a Mason mailer shows Councilman Peter Cammarano’s head with rabbit ears popping in less than auspicious fashion out of a hat held by exuberant magic man Mayor David Roberts.

The implication is that Cammarano represents an elongation of the now gasping Roberts era. But the larger campaign implication is just as telling from this and a constant barrage of counterpunching mailers targeting Cammarano and not Mason’s other chief competitor in a six-person field:  if there must be a runoff, the Mason campaign wants to eliminate Cammarano now and deal one-on-one with Councilwoman Dawn Zimmer later.

Councilman Peter Cammarano

HOBOKEN – The rat mashed to death in the parking lot across the street from the PATH station was a sign of where the mayoral campaign was with five days left: somewhere between ugly and grisly.

Hours after a blog piece broke on Hoboken 411 highlighting what its author sees as the distance between Councilman Peter Cammarano’s family man image and the fact that he fathered a child out of wedlock when he was 18 who is not mentioned in his online biography and depicting him as a deadbeat dad, Cammarano stood in front of City Hall at noon and denounced the story as scurrilous and vile.

“I’m specifically laying it at the feet of Mason and Russo,” said the councilman, who had called the press conference to set out a “blueprint for the future” as a contrast to what he said were the personal destructive political machinations of one of his rivals in the mayor’s race, Councilwoman Beth Mason, and her ally, Councilman Michael Russo.

HOBOKEN – At least one insider poll leaked two months ago showed 2nd Ward Councilwoman Beth Mason ahead in the mayor’s race, and if chalking up the largest number of attacks from two opposing sides signals what kind of a threat she poses, Mason tonight appeared to reconfirm her position as the frontrunner.

Peter Cammarano and Dawn Zimmer both tried to take chunks out of Mason as they suggested she has compromised her reformer brand by constructing a ticket blessed by both state Sen. Brian P. Stack (D-Union City) and 3rd Ward Councilman Michael Russo.

Mason defended her blended ticket experiment as a kind of rainbow coalition, which Zimmer in particular, trying to carry the real reformer banner, couldn’t abide without flashing an incredulous grin. 

Cammarano ‘s people don’t worry about the Kids First victory, which infused Zimmer’s campaign with some headlines last week and gave her a bounce coming into tonight’s debate, making her look like something bigger than she is, the councilman maintains.