Joe Menza

Joe Menza of Hillside

HILLSIDE - It's good news early for the team of mayoral candidate Joe Menza's, who's generating solid numbers in his stronghold.

If At-Large Councilman Jerome Jewell's campaign nurses worry, it's over the weather. If it rains, and rains hard in the after-work hours, they're concerned that the core of their voters might not flood the polls as they've planned.

This is likely a close election. Menza missed by 208 votes in his 2005 challenge. He came in second behind Jewell on May 12th to make the runoff, winning 1,167 to Jewell's 1,368. Both sides believe they're now working a universe of about 2,800 to 2,900 likely voters in this election.

Menza has good command of the senior vote in Hillside, but the African-American working class is Jewell's bet, and so he and his campaign workers keep looking up at the sky, trying to discern what the clouds are doing or will do with the passage of time.

They stifle laughter at the suggestion that Menza could win. They believe the independent real estate developer who's running against Union County Democratic Committee Chairwoman Charlotte DeFilippo and her candidate, Jewell, made a boneheaded miscalculation when he allowed GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie to do a robocall on Menza's behalf.

At-Large Councilman Jerome Jewell (right) campaigning in Hillside in the lead-up to the May 12th election.

HILLSIDE - The mayoral campaign of real estate developer Joe Menza today demanded that At-Large Councilman Jerome Jewell explain the reason behind large dollar Democratic Party campaign contributions coming from outside Hillside to elect Jewell mayor.

Menza campaign spokesman John O’Shea cited a $10,400 gift from the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) and $5,000 from something called the USPO on North Broad Street, Elizabeth, in Jewell's Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC) report.

“One might ask what possible interest could the National Democratic Governors Association have in little Hillside,” wondered O’Shea. “Once it’s determined who the USPO is, a determination of the reason for their involvement can also be made.”

Real estate developer Joe Menza, left, and former School Board member Andre Daniels

HILLSIDE – The losing candidates in the Hillside mayoral race these past few days intensified their support for independent candidate Joe Menza, who’s in a runoff with At-Large Councilman Jerome Jewell.

In a show of solidarity on Saturday, former mayoral candidate Andre Daniels joined Menza for a hot dog social outside Daniels’s former campaign headquarters on Maple Avenue, which Menza will use as his cross-town HQ for the remainder of his runoff campaign with At-Large Councilman Jerome Jewell.

Also defeated in the May 12th mayoral contest, Councilwoman Shelley Bates sent out an email blast to her supporters, officially notifying them of her support for Menza and his slate against the local Democratic Party machine, which backs Jewell.

From left: Joe Menza, Councilwoman Shelley Bates, and former School Board member Andre Daniels

The two losing mayoral candidates and their supporting casts intend to back real estate developer Joe Menza over At-Large Councilman Jerome Jewell in the Hillside muncipal runoff, according to Councilwoman Shelley Bates and a spokesman for former School Board member Andre Daniels. 

Menza’s an independent. 

Jewell has the backing of the local Democratic Party headed by Union County Democratic Party Chair Charlotte DeFilippo.

“Of the two candidates who are running, I definitely support Joe Menza,” said Bates, a grassroots Democrat and Obama activist whose running mate, former School Board member Sip Whitaker, was the target of a mailer initiated in the final days of the campaign by the Jewell organization, highlighting a domestic battery charge from the 1980s.

From left, real estate developer Joe Menza, Councilwoman Shelley Bates, and School Board member Andre Daniels

HILLSIDE – The three anti-establishment candidates for mayor presented a united front in City Hall for nearly two hours. They never mentioned Councilman Jerome Jewell - who didn’t attend tonight’s debate because of a family illness - but took turns flailing away at the local Democratic organization Jewell represents.

“Why would an anonymous third party circulate anonymous fliers with a P.O. Box in Elizabeth care what happens in Hillside?” wondered Councilwoman Shelley Bates, 40, jabbing at the Democratic Party’s countywide political infrastructure anchored by chair Charlotte DeFilippo’s longtime local foothold here.

The crowd cheered and both businessman Joe Menza, 49, and School Board member Andre Daniels, 50, flashed amenable grins.

Then came the candidates’ closing statements and a decided crumbling of the ranks, as Bates asserted that Menza would be a good business liaison and Daniels would well fulfill the role of recreation director.

Councilwoman Shelley Bates, far right, and her team (Sip Whitaker, beside her, Beverly Lynn and Leonard Dupree) discuss issues with resident Camille Haynes.

HILLSIDE – Franklin Street runs parallel to Liberty Avenue, and 2nd Ward Councilwoman Shelley Bates and her team walk it old school, targeting the grassroots councilwoman’s base voters in disciplined fashion. 

“I see great potential in Hillside and I have invested in Hillside for most of my life,” says Bates, 40, a state worker in the communications division with private sector communications and marketing experience.

She ran and beat the local Democratic Party machine on local issues in 2007, simultaneously defeating current rival, independent Joe Menza, among others. In office as she championed good government reforms like televised council meetings and pay-to-play checks. She collected signatures last year to get Barack Obama on the Democratic Primary ballot, and now Bates runs for mayor on the Obama wave with the additional springboard of her own relatively recent victory. 

Joe Menza outside his office on Liberty Avenue

HILLSIDE – Plastered over with signs and backed up under Highway 22 stands Joe Menza’s campaign headquarters, just one more feature on a cluttered streetscape that on its worst days looks as though it fell through the porous surfaces of the overhead highways at this last edge of Union County with Newark on the other side of newly erected road barriers. 

One wrong turn here can deadend you on a loading dock of some reject factory from the rust belt era, and as for Menza, he’s done nothing but buy properties and squash projects onto lots too small to sustain them, Democratic Party boss Charlotte DeFilippo charges of the mayoral candidate, who’s challenging her candidate Jerome Jewell.

Menza’s used to the complaints, and he anticipates a barrage over the course of the next few days prior to Election Day on May 12th. 

“That’s what they tried to do to me in the last mayoral campaign, turn in me into the big bad developer, and now all the candidates are saying we need development in town. There’s been no development in this town for 30 years,” he says, sitting in his office on Liberty Avenue.

School Board member Andre Daniels, Noemi Excobar and Jeffrey Dykes

HILLSIDE – Seated in his campaign headquarters on Maple Avenue, Andre Daniels looks like a mayor, and given the invitation to bash the other three people in the race he grins gravitas tinged with good humor and says only, “Andre Daniels is ready to be mayor.” 

His rivals believe he made a fatal error pouring a lot of his campaign dollars into a big, spacious, professional-looking headquarters rather than focusing on a nimbler, door-to-door operation, and he’s dogged by at least two setbacks, but Daniels claims he has a full-deck operation and is confident of victory on May 12. 

Running as a “change” candidate and the antidote to the DeFilippo-McCoy Oliver power struggle and a critic of 16% raises issued to municipal department heads, the three-year School Board member says, “This town used to be a wonderful place to raise families, but it’s devolved into the political classes driving personal agendas and personal issues. If I’m elected, I will start with a forensic audit of the budget and hire a business administrator. My longer-term goal is to bring in business and lower taxes. This office we’re sitting in right now will be a mini-town hall where residents will be able to contribute to the decision-making process.”

HILLSIDE – Councilman Jerome Jewell heads up a street in the 2nd Ward on foot and a kid walking up the middle of same street calls out to him, “Sir!” and Jewell waves back and he looks confident but the other candidates circle in this mayor’s race, sensing the end of an empire in his every step.

It’s nothing personal against Jewell, a detective with the Newark Police Department who works in the evidence processing department and whose face now circulates throughout the streets on a mailer that reads: “Fearless: Jerome Jewell. …After the planes hit the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, Jerome Jewell was one of the first officers to cross the Hudson to search for survivors. Twenty years of protecting people made him know Ground Zero was where he had to be.” 

To his three energized rivals in the mayor’s race, Jewell just happens to be the latest knight errand saddled up by a Democratic establishment helmed by Union County Democratic Chairwoman Charlotte DeFilippo, the local power broker who runs the council and wants Jewell to succeed the off-the-rails mayoralty of Karen McCoy Oliver.

Joe Menza

Hillside – When mayoral candidate Joe Menza walked into Hurden-Looker Elementary yesterday to vote in the School Board Election, he noticed the gym floor had buckled in the rain.

“That floor was redone just this year,” said Menza. “They didn’t slope it away from the door to avoid a problem like this. Of course, you’re looking at a building that was built in 1924.”

One project’s apparent failure notwithstanding, “If you don’t put money into these schools, you’re going to suffer long-term,” said Menza, who went head-to-head with the local Democratic organization last night in the School Board election and won.

His three candidates – cousin Angela Menza, Shelby Robinson and Daniel Santos – defeated a slate backed by the organization and aligned with presumptive mayoral favorite Councilman Jerome Jewell.

“It was a good day,” said Menza. “Our three candidates won last year, too.”