Joseph Ferriero

There is no word yet on how Dennis Oury's guilty plea this morning will affect the federal corruption trial of former Bergen County Democratic Chairman Joseph Ferriero, which is set to begin on Thursday.  Oury, the former counsel to the Bergen County Democratic Organization, is Ferriero's co-defendant.  The two face conspiracy and mail fraud charges connected to their ownership of a grant-writing company. 

Two days after then-Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano was arrested on corruption charges, Jay Lassiter, a South Jersey political activist, publicly dropped him from his Facebook friends.

"Please don't re-friend me until after you've resigned," Lassiter wrote on Cammarano's wall on July 25 - a message visible to hundreds of the disgraced mayor's Facebook friends. It was supposed to be one of those "who's coming with me?" moments. 

"It didn't go over like I thought it would.  I thought I was going to lead the parade," said Lassiter.  "I actually got snarky notes by Cammarano supporters telling me what a worthless South Jersey piece of (expletive) I was."

Outside of cyberspace, Cammarano, 32, saw his political career come to an abrupt end and his associations evaporate after he was arrested for allegedly taking bribes from an FBI informant posing as a developer. 

But that obligatory public distancing did not extend to Facebook, where many politicians, insiders and media types (including this reporter) remain Cammarano's "friends" - if only out of morbid curiosity over whether he'll update his profile or out of neglect in pruning their own profiles.  

Many politicians have embraced social networking technology, but, as the July 23 corruption sting demonstrates, there is no standard for online etiquette when your online friend has been arrested.  Some politicians (or the staffers who administrate their profiles) do "defriend" ethically troubled Facebook associates, while the thought doesn't cross others' minds.  

Senate President Richard Codey (D-Roseland) is still Facebook friends with Cammarano.

"I think he's suffered enough," said Codey, who added that he tries to be humorous and non-political on his profile.  "I try to be different, as you know if you ever read any of the things I put on there.  I try not to be political, and do different things to get a chuckle sometimes, lighten up somebody's day."

Assemblywoman Alison Littell McHose (R-Franklin Twp) remains Facebook friends with Cammarano, and with former Assemblyman Lou Manzo (D-Jersey City), who was arrested in the same sting.

"I didn't defriend either one of them. That wasn't something I consciously thought about doing," said McHose, who has 1,233 friends.  "I was curious to see whether it would be a means for them to reach out to supporters."

In addition to his Wikipedia biography and a web page for his philanthropic foundation, former Bergen County Democratic Chairman Joseph Ferriero also has a personal website, http://www.josephferriero.com, that carry's his slogan: "Ferriero: Family First."  Today, the site features a photo of Ferriero and the late Ted Kennedy.  In a section called "The Early Years," Ferriero points to building a "neighborhood sandlot baseball field," serving as the "head alter boy" and coming "just four merit badges short of Eagle Scout."

Click here to learn more about Roger Chugh!

For eighteen New Jersey voters, the race for Governor has ended.  U.S. District Court Judge Stanley Chesler has told the twelve jurors and six alternates in the federal corruption trial of former Bergen County Democratic Chairman Joseph Ferriero to "avoid coverage of the gubernatorial race that might touch on political corruption," according to The Record.   

Now that Chesler has essentially disenfranchise these voters, statistically the race now stands at Republican Christopher Christie with a one vote lead over Democrat Jon Corzine, 8-7, with 2 votes for Independent Christopher Daggett, based on the most recent Quinnipiac University poll.  The jury has one undecided voter.

The three gubernatorial campaigns might hypothetically disagree on how the eighteen Ferriero jurors might actually vote in November, after sitting through the entire trial.  Democrats might say that this voter group will believe allegations that Christie's prosecution of Ferriero was politically motivated.  Republicans could suggest that the jurors would be more likely to vote for Christie after the U.S. Attorney's office rests their case.  And Daggett could use the trial as evidence of the need for change.   Either way, it might be fun to poll the jury after the verdict is in.

The Record's Alfred Doblin writes about former Bergen County Democratic Chairman Joseph Ferriero's flowery Wikipedia biography.  His column is a must-read.

The jury in Ferriero's federal corruption trial was picked this week.  The trial is set to start on October 1.  According to The Record, the jury includes "social worker, mortgage banker, retail supervisor, sales analyst, customer service representative, court stenographer, security officer, business analyst and a substitute teacher."

A photo of Joe Ferriero finishing the New York Marathon appears in his new Wikipedia biography

On the day jury selection was set to begin in the federal corruption trial of Joseph Ferriero, a new biography of the former Bergen County Democratic Chairman has appeared on Wikipedia.  The new profile casts Ferriero in an extremely positive way, including family photographs, community service awards, and his record in support of diversity, senior citizens, education, the homeless, and lower taxes.  The wiki page also alludes to allegations that Ferriero's prosecution was politically motivated, and links to a website. (Editor's Note: the link to the website, which opposed GOP gubernatorial candidate Christopher Christie, was deleted early this morning.)  The Record reported the pending jury selection today, and curious potential jurors who Google Ferriero will see the Wikipedia page as the top link.

An earlier edition of Ferriero's Wiki page, which referenced Bergen Democratic fundraising, no bid contracts, and a feud with State Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck) was largely deleted.  The user name of the individual who wrote, edited and redesigned the Ferriero biography had not posted any other biographies on the Wikipedia site.

Jury selection in the federal corruption trial of former Bergen County Democratic Chairman Joseph Ferriero and onetime BCDO counsel Dennis Oury is expected to begin today.  The trial is scheduled to start on October 1 - a month before the general election - and some insiders say it will have an impact on the fall Democratic campaign.  Ferriero and Oury are accused of making money off a grant writing company that marketed services to local governments where the two top Democrats wielded considerable influence. 

The average property tax bill in Garfield is up from $610 since Jon Corzine became governor, says GOP gubernatorial candidate Christopher Christie, who held a community meeting at the Frank B. Calandriello Senior Center in the Bergen County municipality today as part of a campaign swing concentrating on claims that Corzine is responsible for higher taxes and growing unemployment.

Christie noted that Bergen County's unemployment rate is up from 4.1% to 8.2% over the last three years.

In a statement released by the Democratic State Committee, Bergen County Freeholder Director Chairman James Carroll said that Christie "has never been in a position to create jobs for New Jerseyans. 

"This simple fact makes it even more important for him to have a plan, but he does not," Carroll said.

But Bergen County GOP Chairman Robert Yudin simply dismissed Carroll, the mayor of Demarest, as a dual officeholder who will be "out of one of his jobs" when Christie becomes governor.  He also took a clear shot at Carroll's political alliance with former Democratic Chairman Joseph Ferriero, whose federal corruption trial is set to begin this fall.

Republicans might be showing up at political events in Hudson County, but the real battleground of the race for Governor is in Bergen.  No Republican has ever won a statewide election in New Jersey without carrying Bergen County.  In 2005, Jon Corzine beat Douglas Forrester in Bergen by fourteen percentage points and a margin of 34,302 votes. 

To win, Christopher Christie has to turn that around.  The last GOP statewide candidate to carry Bergen was Robert Franks, who received 3,932 votes more than Corzine in the 2000 U.S. Senate race.  Corzine knew that when he picked State Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck) as his running mate. If Christie carries Bergen by a decent margin, Republicans could oust Democratic Freeholders Julie O'Brien and Vernon Walton with their flotsam and jetsam challengers

This year, Corzine is defending Bergen without the help of Joseph Ferriero, whose fundraising prowess and campaign skills turned the state's largest county from solid Republican to solid Democratic.  Ferriero resigned as County Chairman last year following his indictment on federal corruption charges; his trial begins this fall.  For the last seven years, Ferriero has been in the top ten on the PolitickerNJ.com Power List; he was at #7 last year.  The new Democratic Chairman, Michael Kasparian, starts out at #94.   The problem for Christie is that the relatively new Republican County Chairman, Robert Yudin, isn't on the list at all. While Kasparian still hasn't figured out how to be a County Chairman - Corzine's executive order targeting criminally charged Ridgefield Mayor Anthony Suarez is evidence of that -- Yudin hasn't cast himself in the mold of predecessors like Nelson Gross, Anthony Statile and John Inganamort either.