Louis Manzo

Jersey City Councilman Steven Fulop is expected to announce today that he will endorse Louis Manzo for State Senate, and Nicholas Chiaravallotti and Shelia Newton-Moses for State Assembly in the 31st district Democratic primary.  Fulop represents Ward E on the City Council.

MANZO JOINS IN SPONSORING
9-BILL ANTI-SEX-OFFENDER PACKAGE
Assemblyman Calls Get-Tough Measures 'Common Sense'
To Protect Residents, Especially Children

(JERSEY CITY) - Saying the state Legislature should always side with children and sex-offense victims by combating the depraved predatory tendencies of sex offenders, Assemblyman Louis Manzo today announced that he has joined in sponsorship of a nine-bill package aimed at strengthening the state's sex-offender monitoring and sentencing guidelines.

 State Senate candidate Sandra Bolden Cunningham with campaign worker Russell Wallace, a convicted sex offender

Sandra Bolden Cunningham, who is running for state Senate in the 31st district, includes represents parts of Jersey City and Bayonne, received the support last week of Senate President (and former Governor) Richard Codey.

“I gave her campaign $5,000,” said Codey.

Assemblyman Louis Manzo greets Raffaela Crittelli at Pathmark
Sandra Bolden Cunningham, widow of Mayor Glenn Cunningham, walks Jersey City --  too tall to her critics, who complain that she has a Queen Elizabeth-like presence that belies her wobbling legs when it comes to public policy.

Low to the ground, by contrast, is Assemblyman Louis Manzo, a onetime Cunningham ally who has made several unsuccessful bids for Mayor.

Critics say Manzo is combative, that he lacks the temperament for the State Senate, and is alienated politically on an island of his own making.

MANZO BILLS TO REFORM TAX ABATEMENTS, EXEMPTIONS
CLEAR ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE
Measures Would Help Jersey City Taxpayers, Property Owners

(TRENTON) - Two bills Assemblyman Louis Manzo sponsored to give municipalities like Jersey City an enhanced ability to spur redevelopment of blighted, vacant lots and ensure taxpayer accountability in tax abatement agreements were released today by an Assembly panel.

Add to that list of New Jersey disappearances including the arm of Chad Pennington, the glassworks of Trenton, and the Haunted Mansion of Long Branch the mysterious 2007 district 31 Senate candidacy of Sean Cotter.

Assemblyman Louis Manzo, himself a candidate for state Senate in district 31, says real estate developer Cotter told him Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy offered Cotter jobs in exchange for Cotter’s help in entering the Senate race as a spoiler. Healy -- who along with the Hudson County Democratic Organization -- backs Manzo’s chief rival Sandra Bolden Cunningham, calls the charge an outright falsehood.

Last Friday, on the same day Manzo said his legal team was going to make the information public in a Newark courtroom where Manzo was challenging the legitimacy of Cunningham’s primary petition, Cotter abruptly exited the Senate race with a fax to the state Division of Elections Office.

Judge Joseph Paone of the state Office of Administratve Law today ruled in favor of keeping Sandra Bolden Cunningham on the Democratic Primary ballot.

Cunningham, a candidate for State Senate in district 31, last week received a legal challenge from rival candidate Assemblyman Louis Manzo, who said Cunningham should not be allowed to participate in the primary because she filed a general election and not a primary election petition.

In his decision Thursday afternoon, Paone granted there were problems with Cunningham's petition and acknowledged many of the signatures Cunningham submitted were defective. 

In a combative political state, it figures that it would come down to Jersey City and Bayonne and the 31st district that incorporates pieces of both those two-fisted towns, where Sandra Bolden Cunningham and Assemblyman Louis Manzo both want to be State Senator.

First the two rivals need to slog across that Normandy Beach of mayhem and doom otherwise known as a Hudson County Democratic Party Primary. But whether or not Cunningham will even be able to participate in the action now hinges on Judge Joseph Paone of the state Office of Administrative Law, who today said he needed more time to reach a decision in the case of Manzo v. Cunningham.

Brown allowed to run in district 13, Cunningham on hold
If a decision rendered today by the state Office of Administrative Law (OAL) holds up under the scrutiny of the Attorney General’s Office, Robert Brown of Old Bridge will be allowed to run as a candidate in the district 13 Democratic Primary.

The state Division of Elections initially rejected Brown’s primary signatures because he submitted them as general election signatures.

Assemblyman Louis Manzo apparently came to fight in the district 31 Senate race, where the latest casualty to emerge from the political House of Atreus called Hudson County is Sean Cotter of Bayonne.

Last month, Cotter was grabbing cute ledes in the Star-Ledger referring to his tennis game, and as late as last week was advancing himself as a “New Frontier Democrat� from Bayonne.

This week he’s out of the race, not returning phone calls, and being depicted by Manzo as little more than a prop in the Machiavellian stagecraft of Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy and the Hudson County Democratic Organization.