Jun Choi

There's some buzz that Edison Mayor Jun Choi might try to run for as a Republican now that the GOP has lost their candidate, but the idea is a non-starter.

Reached by PolitickerNJ.com, Choi, who lost the Democratic primary earlier this month, pointed out that that the state's "sore loser" law bars him from running in the general after losing the primary.

Choi is correct.  Even though the law does not apply to legislators, freeholders, and even municipal council members, mayors are barred from running again.  But a Democrat allied with Choi could switch parties and become the GOP candidate against Democrat Toni Ricigliano.

The law was challenged in 2005, when the late Albert McWilliams, then mayor of Plainfield, lost the Democratic primary to Sharon Robinson-Briggs.  McWilliams tried to run as a Republican, but County Clerk Joanne Rajoppi wouldn't let him on the ballot.  After a court challenge, Union County Superior Court Judge Walter Barisonek ruled the law unconstitutional, but his decision was overturned on appeal.

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.

Mayor Donald Cresitello, left, and Zoning Board Chairman Tim Dougherty at their debate the week before Election Day.

Certainly, someone running for re-election this year might be comforted by special case asterisks in those contests where challengers upset sitting mayors or council people.

But consider the name politicians who lost over the course of May and June municipal cycles, or found the terrain too tough to run again, or barely won re-election, and it looks like treacherous territory for incumbents in a gubernatorial election year.

Two of last week's losers - Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello (buried by Tim Dougherty, 62.46 to 37.48%) and Edison Mayor Jun Choi (who lost, 50.70 to 47.79% contest to Councilwoman Toni Ricigliano) - arrived at their re-election bids with their own particular challenges.

In or around elected office for over 30 years, Cresitello possesses institutional knowledge and insider connections that helped as he kept Morristown's tax rate stable over the course of his most recent four-year term. But he also asked for pay raises for himself, which the council refused, targeted undocumented workers in his crackdown of apartment house stacking, and considered placing a public works' garage in Ward 2, which empowered his opponent to build on a base of residents who felt disrespected.

In addition to Jon Corzine and Christopher Christie, independent gubernatorial candidate Christopher Daggett will need to pick a running mate within the next four weeks.  If Daggett qualifies for matching funds - he told NJN's Michael Aron on Tuesday that he expects to do that within the next few weeks - his campaign will have at least $1.1 million to spend on the race.  And if the Legislature passes a bill (already through the Assembly) to mandate Lt. Governor debates, Daggett's running mate will be on TV with, for example, Barbara Buono and Diane Allen.  Daggett won't want a James Stockdale situation.

To demonstrate that his ticket is truly independent, Daggett, a former Republican who held top environmental posts under President Ronald Reagan and Gov. Thomas Kean, may be considering a Democrat.  The Inside Edge, not in consultation with the Daggett campaign, has put together a short list of ten potential Daggett LG candidates:

Edison Mayor Jun Choi

EDISON - Mayor Jun Choi figured he needed about 5,000 votes to win tonight and he mobilized more than that number, but Councilwoman Toni Ricigliano still out-dueled him in this Democratic Primary, 50.70% to 47.79%, or 6,582 to 6,204, according to the Middlesex County Clerk's Office.

"The movement does not end, and we feel good about not having compromised," said Choi, who ran and lost off the line in his bid for a second term in office.

"We never compromised our principles," said the mayor, who said the Police Benevolent Association aligned with his opponent launched negative attacks against him during the final days of the campaign, which proved the difference, in his view.

Choi does not know if he will support Ricigliano in her general election contest against Republican Raymond Koperwhats, who secured 1,645 votes or 98.39% in his uncontested primary election.

Worth watching on Tuesday: Democratic mayoral primaris in Edison, Englewood, Morristown,  Atlantic City, Plainfield, Camden and East Orange, and Republican intra-party fights in Bergen, Gloucester and Passaic counties.

The Thomas Alva Edison bust at Town Hall.

In their WCTC radio debate broadcast live this morning, Edison Mayor Jun Choi battled Councilwoman Toni Ricigliano, blunting Ricigliano’s complaints about his fulltime salary by repeatedly depicting her as a creature of local unions and the local Democratic Party machine. 

The councilwoman strenuously resisted the characterization, noting her work for Edison as an independent agent on the council who bucked former Mayor George Spadoro.

If elected, “I would take a pay cut,” said Ricigliano, who voted unsuccessfully to stop Choi from giving himself a fulltime, $75,000 salary. “I think you have to lead by example. Union contracts are renegotiated. How do you tell others to tighten belt if you’re unwilling to do that yourself?”

A baffled Choi - who said the $75,000 represents the lowest mayor's salary earned by an executive serving any of New Jersey's top ten sized towns - went after Ricigliano’s record, both in her role as an apologist for the local old or, in his view, an ineffective opponent of the old order. 

“Her record doesn’t match her rhetoric,” said Choi. “She has not shown courage and an example to protect taxpayers. She has authorized a contract that pays 95% of our police more than $100,000 in total compensation. How can you give away this contract and yet criticize me? We have taken on tough fights. …She is receiving major police union support 77% of her individual campaign contributions are from police support. I received zero.”

The Edison bust in Town Hall.

EDISON – Mayor Jun Choi vowed to run on idealism, and yet outside Edison High School his volunteers approach students with the enticement, “Do you want a free sandwich?”

It proves no great contradiction on closer inspection as these Choi backers hastily slap bologna and mayonnaise between slices of otherwise unadorned white bread and hand them out more for theatrical effect than outright pandering to human gluttony. Others wave signs denouncing Councilwoman Toni Ricigliano, Choi’s opponent in the June 2nd Democratic Primary.

“Toni the Phoni’s House of Boloni… You can get any sandwich you like as long as it’s full of boloni… Just like Toni the Phoni.”

Volunteers urge students to tell their parents to vote for Choi, who’s running for his second term as mayor.

Edison Mayor Jun Choi

EDISON – It just got ugly in Edison, where Mayor Jun Choi wants to win reelection against a fuming local Democratic Party organization, whose allies charge Choi with bully boy tactics even as the mayor maintains his essential argument that the machine he fights protects its own to the detriment of Edison taxpayers.

First came a morning release issued by members of Edison Local 75, who claim the mayor talked to police officers in town about the possibility of their joining his slate of candidates running for the local party committee – a charge Choi says his opponents are throwing out there to distract people from the main issue – “a multimillion dollar racket that’s been going on here for years.”

The police say they felt strong-armed.

“It was pure and simple coercion,” complained Keith Hahn, state delegate for PBA Local 75. “Our mayor just showed up uninvited on officers’ doorsteps, right in front of their families. He tried to persuade them to run for Democratic Committee and to support him. Of course, these guys felt like they were being pressured.” 

Edison Mayor Jun Choi pursues a second term in office.

EDISON  - Mayor Jun Choi walked out to a mound on Sunday and threw a respectable toss in the vicinity of the plate to launch the little league season here in front of dozens of teams that in this sprawling suburban torque point looked like child armies mobilized in the name of world order. 

Running as a renegade again, the Choi campaign’s internals in the Democratic Primary show him ahead of Councilwoman Toni Ricigliano, the local establishment candidate, who’s going for the jugular with a mail piece that shows a car belly up accompanied by the tag line, “Choi has turned Edison upside down.”

Walking off the field, Choi said he takes it as a point of personal pride that he turned the town upside down. He upset the old order and gradually is attempting to replace it with a new one. In that vein, to date he’s handled Ricigliano’s candidacy as the final try trumpeting of a mastodon organization he thinks he can topple utterly on June 2nd as he fields a full slate of local committee candidates.