Joe Vas

Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Sayreville), Middlesex County Chairman Joe Spicuzzo, and South Amboy Mayor Jack O'Leary

Assemlyman John Wisniewski (D-Sayreville) today called his running mate in the 19th Legislative District, South Amboy Mayor Jack O'Leary, and asked him to give serious thought to getting out of the Assembly race.

"I have asked Mayor O'Leary to carefully consider the viabilty of his candidacy in light of the current state of affairs in New Jersey," said Wisniewski, moments after calling O'Leary.

The mayor sounded unphased by his running mate's call.

"I'm still where I'm at," O'Leary told PolitickerNJ.com. "I'm still running." 

A replacement for indicted Perth Amboy Mayor/Assemblyman Joe Vas, O'Leary immediately ran into questions about his and his brother's insurance work for surrounding municipalities and his brother's establishment of the South Amboy Democratic Club to allegedly solicit contributions from people doing business in South Amboy.

O'Leary has consistently said he has done nothing wrong.

South Amboy Mayor Jack O'Leary, right, with Assemblyman John Wisniewksi (D-Sayreville), left, and Middlesex County Democratic Chairman Joe Spicuzzo.

SOUTH AMBOY - Middlesex County remains on Jack O'Leary alert following an anonymous opposition research dump earlier in the summer, which proclaimed to have dredged up the worst political history on the long-serving South Amboy mayor in the middle of his 19th Legislative District campaign for the seat vacated by indicted Assemblyman Joe Vas (D-Perth Amboy).

O'Leary initially dug in against the tide of party officials privately telling him to abandon his campaign in this 2-1 Democratic district after a packet of materials titled "O'Leary Crime Family Syndicate" hit the streets in this dockside town, alleging O'Leary's brother's establishment of the South Amboy Democratic Club to solicit contributions from "active and potential businesses and individuals wishing to obtain employment or do business with the city or housing authority," charging the mayor with giving his brother a no-show job as director of the South Amboy Housing Authority, and with personally profiting from public insurance work countywide.

While professing no wrongdoing, on reflection these past few weeks, Mayor O'Leary said he hardly feels as though he's reached a conclusion about whether or not he intends to run.

Gov. Jon Corzine campaigns with Middlesex County Freeholder Ronald Rios and family in Carteret at the Independence Day Festival on Friday evening.

CARTERET - The barges and freighters come through here on their way to Raritan Bay and passing on the Friday before the Fourth of July, some of them give a blast to the crowd gathered at the Carteret Municipal Marina where Staten Island almost seems a strong sidearm throw away but where the band plays the obligatory Springsteen cover - lest anyone doubt this is the Jersey side of the river.

In this case it's "Pink Cadillac" as Gov. Jon Corzine heads through the corridor of tents mobbed with revelers eager for nighttime.

An old factory town literally split in half by the Turnpike, Carteret occupies a point on the Arthur Kill that looks like it could crack off with the weight of reinforced concrete and rustbelt reject silos, warehouses stacked almost to the water's edge and now clusters of condos. The feeling in the working class crowd Friday is more than upbeat on the eve of Independence Day, with plates of ethnic food reflective of more mixed culture than any one definable or dominant strain.

Politically it's not as commingled. 

While 12 of Middlesex County's 25 towns have more registered voters than Carteret, the 10,797 registereds here are 4-1 Democrat over Republican with half unaffiliated. 

Mayor Wilda Diaz, center, with her sisters, Lourdes O'Donnell, left, and Nancy Diaz.

PERTH AMBOY - There were days over the course of her first year in office in which Mayor Wilda Diaz wondered whether she could run Perth Amboy for a full four years.

She began to get a deepening sense that the problems were too entrenched, the solutions too troublesome and, in some cases, too hurtful to the people.  

Her 2008 grassroots take-down of City Hall fixture Mayor/Assemblyman Joe Vas proved to be but the beginning of an ongoing and intensifying drama in which Diaz and her administration uncovered an inherited $10.6 million budget shortfall and helped state and federal authorities pull together a corruption case against Vas.

"On this stage last July I could never have envisioned that we would discover a financial crisis so deep, or a web of tangled deals so wide," Diaz said tonight in her first state of the city address at Perth Amboy High School, where she attended school and graduated.

Once running and now continuing to insist on honest and open government, the new mayor in this first year enacted unpoplar measures to reverse course on a local miasma made doubly injurious on residents here by a national recession. Her policies have included a 26% tax increase, water rate increases, wage freezes and layoffs of municipal employees.

A day after the feds dropped charges on him to add to already existing state charges, the state Attorney General’s Office today filed more corruption charges against former Perth Amboy Mayor Joe Vas.

In a release, Attorney General Anne Milgram said the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice obtained an indictment charging Vas with conspiring as mayor of Perth Amboy to “obtain illicit gifts and payments from city vendors, and laundering money into his congressional campaign through straw donors.  The Attorney General’s Office previously indicted Vas in March for allegedly stealing city funds as mayor.”

The 54-year old Vas was charged in a 19-count state grand jury indictment along with his longtime aide Melvin Ramos, 53, two corporations that were city vendors, and two owners of one of the corporations.  

A former assemblyman, Vas faces multiple second-degree counts of conspiracy and official misconduct, among other charges.  The charges stem from an investigation by the Division of Criminal Justice Corruption Bureau. 

PERTH AMBOY – Although his blue collar campaign for governor never materialized this year, Councilman Ken Balut still nurses irritation over his city’s longstanding tendency to get gypped on state and federal aid and generally outmuscled by urban behemoths like Newark and Paterson. 

Balut’s through with Democrats who associated with former Perth Amboy Mayor Joe Vas, and that includes incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine and former Gov. James McGreevey, whom he lumps in the same failed era with Vas, indicted last month on state corruption charges amid rumors of forthcoming indictments connected to the old regime. 

It was Corzine’s state Attorney General Anne Milgram who goes into the books as the one who indicted Vas on theft and bid-rigging charges but, “I’m voting for (former U.S. Attorney) Chris Christie,” the disillusioned Balut told PolitickerNJ.com. “We need somebody in the governor’s office who’s going to go after corruption.” 

Mayor Wilda Diaz, who ran on a ticket with Balut, backs Corzine. 

Attorney General Anne Milgram, who is building a case against former Perth Amboy Mayor Joseph Vas, won her second guilty plea form a Perth Amboy official today.

Perth Amboy recreation supervisor Ana Pastrana, 49, pleaded guilty today to using city funds to pay off a credit card in her name that she used for personal expenses for herself and Vas.  In her plea, Pastrana said that Vas directed her to reimburse the card for purchases of sneakers, beachwear and sportswear through a bank account for the city’s Housing Development Corporation.  

“With this second guilty plea, we continue to advance our case against former Perth Amboy mayor Joseph Vas, who we charge conspired with other officials to enrich himself at the expense of his struggling city and its taxpayers,” said Milgram.

Perth Amboy Mayor Wilda Diaz reacted to the news today that Jeffrey D. Gumbs, former director of human services and recreation super under former Mayor Joseph Vas, admitted submitting fraudulent invoices to the city to pay for personal expenses for both himself and Vas.

“My administration has zero tolerance for anyone in city government who violates the trust and confidence of the people that we are here to serve,” Diaz said in a statement. As we have stated previously, we have been cooperating fully with law enforcement authorities throughout their investigations and will continue to do so."

MCDO Chairman Joe Spicuzzo

In his first conversation with embattled Assemblyman Joe Vas (D-Perth Amboy) since Vas absorbed corruption charges from the state Attorney General’s office nearly two weeks ago, Middlesex County Democratic Organization Chairman Joe Spicuzzo urged the former Perth Amboy mayor to resign his seat as chair of the local Democratic organization.

“I told him it would be better for all concerned if he did resign,” said Spicuzzo, who spoke with Vas this morning. “He told me he’s done nothing wrong and does not intend to give up his chairmanship. So we’ll let the process play out. His term is up in early June. 

“He also defended the party over there in Perth Amboy and challenged recent quotes in the paper that his organization is floundering,” Spicuzzo added.