Jerramiah Healy

Over the course of the last month, the Hudson County rumor mill has been rife with talk that Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy, who’s facing a lawsuit that seeks to remove him from office, is preparing to resign.  

Last night, Healy sought to squelch that talk.   

“I’m not resigning.  Not only am I not resigning, but no way in hell am I resigning because Lou Manzo has brought an absurd application addressed to the Monmouth County prosecutor’s office to remove an elected Hudson county official,” said Healy in a phone interview with PolitickerNJ.  “I’m not only not resigning, I am running for mayor again in seven months.”

Jersey City Councilman Steve Fulop just saw his own municipal pay-to-play ordinance signed into law by the city council on Tuesday.  The next day, Gov. Corzine outlined a sweeping ethics reform package that, if passed, Fulop thinks will strengthen the one that Jersey City just enacted. 

The Governor’s plan covers banning contributions to municipal officials from redevelopers.  That, Fulop said, was part of his original plan, but he was advised that it wouldn’t pass muster in a legal challenge because of state laws favoring redevelopers– so he dropped it. 

“For us in Jersey City, I think the Governor’s would certainly be stricter because it would affect redevelopment, which would give us more stringent pay-to-play laws,” said Fulop.

Bret Schundler is mulling another bid for Mayor of Jersey City, his job from 1992 to 2001.
Count former Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler as one ally of former Assemblyman Lou Manzo in his quest to force Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy to forfeit his office.

“If what the officer said happened actually happened, then I think Healy should be removed,” he said.

After grand jury testimony surfaced from a police officer alleging that Healy tried to use his political status to “sweep” his 2006 disorderly conduct arrest in Bradley Beach “under the rug,” Manzo filed a lawsuit asking the Monmouth County Prosecutor to look into the matter.

Responding to Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy’s charge that he’s a lawsuit-mad political opportunist, former Assemblyman and potential mayoral candidate Lou Manzo today defended his decision to file a lawsuit seeking to oust Healy from public office.

Healy was convicted over a 2006 disorderly conduct charge stemming from an incident outside of his sister’s Bradley Beach restaurant, which he’s currently appealing in state Supreme Court.  After former Newark Councilwoman Dana Rone was ordered to forfeit her office after her own disorderly conduct conviction, Manzo sought to apply the same standard to Healy.

Healy claims that he never invoked his office to the arresting police officers, as Rone did while trying to get her nephew out of a parking ticket.  The Rone incident, however, was captured on videotape.  Healy’s incident was not, but in grand jury testimony, several police officers involved claimed that Healy mentioned his office several times, along with his friendship with the Bradley Beach chief of police in order to “sweep this under the rug.” 

Below is Manzo’s full statement. 

Angered by former Assemblyman Lou Manzo’s legal action to try to get Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy removed from office, Healy chief of staff Dominick Pandolfo issued a scathing response, characterizing Manzo as a lawsuit-mad wannabe mayor.

“Four time loser Louis Manzo is an embittered and disgruntled individual who spends his time filing frivolous lawsuits," said Pandolfo (Manzo has sought the mayor's office four times in the past, and narrowly lost to Healy in a 2004 runoff). "He is angered that the mayor did not endorse him in his recent run for the Senate, which he lost by an overwhelming margin to our candidate, Sen. Sandra Cunningham. He is also upset that the mayor refused to re-hire his close friend who had been terminated by a prior administration due to unexplained and excessive absenteeism.”

Former Assemblyman Lou Manzo, a potential mayoral candidate in Jersey City next year, filed a petition with Monmouth County Superior Court to ask them to weigh whether Mayor Jerramiah Healy’s conduct during his 2006 Bradley Beach arrest should trigger him to forfeit his office.

No hearing date is set yet, and Manzo can’t release details until all parties have been served.

Healy was convicted of disorderly conduct in Bradley Beach last year, and has sought unsuccessfully to reverse the decision several times. He’s currently appealing it in the state Supreme Court.

But after an Essex County judge ruled that former Newark Councilwoman Dana Rone must forfeit her office earlier this summer, Manzo started digging and hired legal counsel to see whether the same standard should apply to Healy. Healy and Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said it shouldn’t, since Healy never invoked his office during his arrest.

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. -- Chicago-based political consultant Bill Pascoe, who ran Bret Schundler’s 2001 and 2005 gubernatorial bids, said that had it not been for the need to feed the media beast, Schundler could have easily won his first gubernatorial bid.

And today, eight years after leaving office as Jersey City mayor, Pascoe believes that not only does Schundler have a good chance to reclaim that seat, but that he’s one of the leading contenders.

Sitting at yesterday's New Jersey delegation breakfast at the Hilton Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport, Pascoe flashed back to early 2001. He was managing Schundler’s fledgling campaign for governor, and couldn’t gain any traction with the media. A top statehouse reporter, he said, told him that reporters wouldn’t cover Schundler’s campaign because they were convinced that he was merely positioning himself for his mayoral re-election in May of the same year. So to prove his sincerity, Schundler didn’t file to run for re-election.

A year ago, Jersey City Councilman Steve Fulop’s two reform ordinances – one banning pay-to-play and one banning council members from accepting more than one public salary – were rejected by the city council.  Tonight the same council passed one of them unanimously, after Fulop gathered enough signatures to get it on the ballot.  The ordinance was  Fulop’s anti pay-to-play law, which bans contributions from vendors with business before the city.

“It’s Democracy in action.  It forced their hand. The same council that voted no passed it unanimously,” said Fulop in a phone interview after tonight’s meeting. 

DENVER -- State Sen. Sandra B. Cunningham still hasn’t made a decision about whether she’ll run for mayor of Jersey City.  And that’s as much as she’ll say on the subject.

“I don’t know yet,” she said.  “I’d rather not answer any of the stuff relating to that right now.”

Although Cunningham is staying in the same hotel as incumbent Mayor Jerramiah Healy, both said that they had not discussed anything about the mayor’s race during their time at the convention or, for that matter, ever (whether people close to them are talking about it is a different matter). 

Hudson County Republican Chairman Jose Arango supported Bret Schundler in his past gubernatorial bids, but whether he’ll support the former Mayor’s bid to return to Grove Street is an open question.

“I have to go to the Jersey City Republican Party and ask them what they want to do,” said Arango during a phone interview.

The mayoral elections in Jersey City are non-partisan, which made it possible for a Republican like Schundler to win in a crowded field in 1992. Now, with Schundler looking to run again, Arango finds himself with a tough decision. He’s the city’s Director of Economic Development, and has given significant campaign contributions to Mayor Jerramiah Healy, a Democrat.

But he’s also found Schundler to be a loyal ally in the past.

“Schundler always supported me, and I always supported him. I have to do what’s right for the people,” he said.