Keith Reid

IRVINGTON - Gov. Jon Corzine's informal endorsement tonight of Mayor Wayne Smith when the two walked on Springfield Avenue came shortly after Smith heartily endorsed the incumbent governor on the steps of City Hall as someone who understands the plight of this Essex County town of perennial hard knocks.

The knock on Smith usually comes in the form of a whisper.

"We've been together from the beginning," the governor said of the mayor, who for almost two years has heard the murmurs when he walks past - "Keith Reid named him in court as Irvington Official #1," and inevitably fielded reporters' repeated phone calls asking him if he plans to resign.

If not today, what about tomorrow?

"What you learn in this business is a public official can be accused of anything," Smith told PolitickerNJ.com. "You live with these things and you live through them. I haven't heard anything from the U.S. Attorney's Office, but more importantly, I didn't do anything wrong."

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Keith Reid, the former Chief of Staff to Newark City Council President Mildred Crump, was sentenced to 51 months in a prison.  Last November, after his federal corruption trial had already started, Reid pleaded guilty to accepting $15,500 in bribes from an undercover FBI agent seeking insurance brokerage business for at least two municipalities, Newark and Irvington.

"That is an appropriately long prison sentence that indeed sends a strong message and warning to public officials like Reid who want to leverage their positions for unlawful personal gain," said Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra, Jr.

Reid admitted that in July 2007 he used his influence to set up a meeting between Crump and the FBI undercover company and advocated for that company at the meeting.  After the meeting, he met an FBI cooperating witness in a parked car and accepted a cash bribe.  The following month, he set up a meeting with an Irvington official - believed to be Mayor Wayne Smith - and the FBI sting operation.

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TRENTON- Challenged by Mayor Wayne Smith and Team Irvington in his squeak-out, off-the-line re-election victory last year, state Sen. Ronald Rice (D-Essex) said he hopes Smith did not authorize Keith Reid to accept a $5,000 bribe on his behalf – which is what Reid told a jury in Newark earlier today.

“Wayne is a real hard working mayor, always has been, and he’s committed to his township,” said Rice, who in 2007 fended off a challenge by Smith ally Councilman L. Bilal Beasely after Smith himself expressed a desire to go up against Rice.

“Hopefully that’s not the case,” Rice added of the under-oath statement by Reid, former chief of staff of Newark City Council President Mildred Crump.

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IRVINGTON - North Ward Councilman David Lyons, a likely 2010 mayoral candidate, has long been the nemesis of Irvington Mayor Wayne Smith, for whom Keith Reid at his trial today said he accepted a $5,000 bribe.

“Number one, if that’s true,” said Lyons, “Wayne needs to resign. He should do the honorable thing and resign.”

Last year, the U.S. Attorney’s Office indicted Reid and ten other officials throughout New Jersey for accepting bribes from representatives of Coastal Solutions, LLC., an FBI operation posing as an insurance brokerage business offering services to municipalities. The indictment accused Reid of accepting $10,000 bribes from a cooperating witness in exchange for his assurance that he would influence Newark City Council President Mildred Crump and other public officials in Newark and Irvington to help secure insurance brokerage contracts.

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NEWARK – The last member of Operation Broken Boards in his trial today implicated Irvington Mayor Wayne Smith as someone for whom he took a bribe. 

Keith Reid admitted that he accepted cash bribes totaling $10,000 in exchange for his influence with public officials in Newark, Irvington and elsewhere.

The former chief of staff to Newark Council President Mildred Crump, Reid, 49, of Carteret, agreed during his guilty plea to forfeit a total of $15,500, representing the entire amount of bribes he took as described in the indictment on which he was being tried in federal court, according to a release issued by U.S. Attorney Spokesman Michael Drewniak.

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U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, right, and FBI Director Weysan Dun last year in Trenton on the day Mims Hackett was arrested.

NEWARK - The steps of City Hall.

That was the image U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie used to tell the bad ending story of former Assemblyman and Orange Mayor Mims Hackett, who twice pleaded guilty today: once in federal court to one count of attempted extortion, and once in state Superior Court to a charge of official misconduct.

Flanked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office by state Attorney General Anne Milgram and state FBI Director Weysan Dun, Christie made special mention of the fact that it was outside City Hall that Hackett took the bribe which started his fall.

"This is a public servant who decided that $5,000 was a good down payment for him to sell his office," said Christie.

The defiant U.S. Attorney recalled critics who questioned his office’s motives when Hackett and ten other elected officials first appeared in court last year to answer to federal corruption charges.

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Irvington Council President John SowellIRVINGTON - Shot in the leg as he walked out of a pizza parlor two years ago, Keith White instinctively ran for cover from the blast of the 9 mm going off next to him.

"I didn’t even know I’d been hit," says White. "I was hit an inch above my knee. No police came to the scene, no police came to the hospital to file a report. I drove myself to the hospital."

Standing on Durand Place outside the neighborhood firehouse this week, he’s wearing combat boots, a cap with the National Guard insignia on it and fatigues.

"I’ve lived in Irvington all my life and I haven’t seen the positives increase." says the 21-year old career counselor and retention specialist with the Guard who’s been stationed stateside his three years in the service.

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Keith Reid, who served as the Chief of Staff to Newark City Council President Mildred Crump until his arrest in October, was indicted today on charges that he took $13,500 in cash bribes to steer an insurance contract to an undercover FBI company. The Indictment also accuses Reid of conspiring with an Irvington Township official -- identified only as Irvington Official 1 in the Indictment.

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The Buddy Tyler Award for the dumbest politician of the week – and in New Jersey there is much competition for such a title – goes to Newark City Council President Mildred Crump. Yesterday, Crump complained to a Star-Ledger reporter that she felt dissed by the Devils because they didn’t give a free luxury box to the City Council. The boxes sell for $225,000 each. Read More >

Newark City Council President Mildred Crump says that Keith Reid, who was arrested yesterday on charges that he accepted a cash bribe to deliver a city insurance contract, has taken a leave of absence from his post as her Chief of Staff.

She says Reid requested the leave.

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