L. Harvey Smith

Shelia Newton-Moses campaigns at the Colonette Diner in Jersey City
It's a long life in public service versus a life of fiesty private enterprise in this district 31 undercard where veteran former Jersey City Mayor, State Senator and Council President L. Harvey Smith will fight today with businesswoman and private school educator Shelia Newton Moses for votes in Jersey City and Bayonne.

Both candidates expect to pull votes in Ward F, which is about 85 percent African-American. Wards A and B also contain a large percentage of the district’s African American voters, particularly A, where Smith is banking on his reputation with his base, and Newton-Moses hopes her community activism and vitality count for some votes.

Senate Majority Leader Bernard Kenny, the Hudson County Democratic Chairman, told the Star-Ledger that Sandra Bolden Cunningham "would be the first African-American Senator from Hudson County, and I think that matters."  Actually, Cunningham would be the fourth African American to represent Hudson in the State Senate, and Kenny has served with the other three: Joseph Charles, a Senator from 2002 to 2003; L. Harvey Smith, a Senator for a brief time in 2003 and 2004; and the late Glenn Cunningham, who held the Senate seat for six months until his death in June 2004.

In the sea of Hudson County politics, all of those beleaguered sailors set adrift out there in the face of June 5th, Election Day, depending on their loyalties either fear or embrace the perfect storm, envisioned by that upstart pirate skipper Brian P. Stack.

Stack, the mayor of Union City and an Assemblyman, jumped out in front of the Hudson County Democratic Organization when he announced his intentions of supplanting State Sen. Bernie Kenny, who later said formally he would retire.

Now Stack is favored to win the Democratic Primary in the 33rd District, which includes Union City, West New York, Weehawken, Hoboken, Guttenberg and part of Jersey City. He already has an ally in Weehawken Mayor Richard Turner. The candidate’s also pumped money into the municipal re-election bids of the young Turks in Hoboken, who are restlessly jockeying for position to succeed Mayor David Roberts.