Joanne Rajjoppi

July 3, 2009 - 12:16pm

Garrett Smith and the ongoing post-Cohen era Roselle war

By Max Pizarro, PolitickerNJ.com Reporter

Roselle Mayor Garrett Smith

Roselle Mayor Garrett Smith needed this one, and so did the Union County Democratic Organization.

Those two mutually exclusive desires added up to one thing: a war.

Ever since former Assemblyman Neil Cohen's (D-Roselle) career went belly up amid charges of keeping child porn on his computer, the battle lines for local party control intensified here in his town, which, depending on your perspective, is either a buffer for Westfield against the danger-zone of Elizabeth or a buffer for Elizabeth against the whitebread excesses of Cranford and Westfield.

A mild-mannered wonk in Trenton, Cohen could get tough in his hometown as head of the local party. He wasn't beyond delivering full-blown, profanity-laced public dress-downs to recalcitrant committee members as he dealt with the ongoing headache of Smith, a charismatic independent Democrat, originally from Jersey City, who built his name as head of a thriving local basketball league before seeking his first term as mayor in 2003.

Smith and Cohen could grudgingly come together to beat on Republicans in presidential or gubernatorial general elections, but mostly they embroiled themselves in a Roselle battle-royale with themselves as chief antagonists.

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