Mildred Crump

Newark Council President Mildred Crump

On the week the Chris Christie campaign opened its Newark headquarters and Republican lieutenant governor candidate Kim Guadagno told a crowd she knows what it's like to be afraid on the streets here, City Council members opened up on Christie's number two.

“I am stunned that the Monmouth County Sheriff would say she is afraid to walk our streets,” Newark Council President Mildred Crump, an ally of Gov. Jon Corzine, said in a release. “As someone running to be the next in line to lead this state, it is very disconcerting to hear that Sheriff Guadagno was apparently scared to set foot into the city when she was coming here to teach law.”

North Ward Councilman Anibal Ramos ratcheted up the critique.

“The Christie campaign came to Newark to open a campaign headquarters and managed to verbalize in one sentence all that is wrong with their campaign,” Ramos said.  “It is pure hypocrisy for them to say they care about Newark and its residents in one breath and, in the next, say they are afraid to walk our streets.”

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.

Mayor Cory Booker, center, with Oscar winner Forest Whitaker, left, and jazz pianist Eric Lewis

NEWARK – On the city’s 21st anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, 72 hours before Obama’s presidential inaugural, Newarkers at Grace Episcopal Church rejoiced in a ceremony of blended Obama-MILK symbolism that apparently left no room or reason for last minute retaliatory elbows thrown at the outgoing Bush administration. 

In short, the most joyfully considered and relevant transition of power here was from King to Obama. 

“I’m a child of the 1960s. There are still a few of us around, right, Mildred?” said Gov. Jon Corzine, finding Council President Mildred Crump’s smiling face in the crowd. “King defined our aspirations, and what we could seek to find. When he was killed in Memphis he was talking about a living wage. We have a long way to go, but at this moment, when Barack Obama is sworn in, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream will become a reality. 

“God bless the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the presidency of Barack Obama,” added Corzine, and moments later, Crump cried, “That’s my governor,” as people in the crowd lurched to their feet.

Sen. Ronald Rice (D-Essex)

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.

NEWARK – Getting caught in the middle of political theater involving other, bigger antagonists goes with the territory when it comes to the fledgling career of Nakea White, Central Ward council candidate.   

No big deal.

Politics here with all of its intrigue still generally has fewer hard edges than crime.

“The number one issue in our ward is crime, especially with the recent shootings on Boyd, these are the issues affecting people,”  says White, sitting in her gritty, second story campaign headquarters on Springfield Avenue. “People are scared.  A woman told me the other day she’s scared that she might be the next person to get shot.”

Former Councilman Charles Bell: Politicker photo 

NEWARK - The crowded race for a vacant Central Ward Council seat features a veteran with the stalwart backing of Newark’s gray-haired fathers, versus a labor-cash infused newcomer who may or may not receive support from a wobbling Mayor Cory Booker.

Thirteen candidates hope to fill the seat an assignment judge separated from Central Ward Councilwoman Dana Rone after Rone this summer exhausted her appeals process going back to a 2006 obstruction of justice case.

But apparent frontrunner Charles Bell sees his chief challenger - both for Obama affection and for the local council seat - as fellow labor brother Eddie Osborne, whose billboards and signs laden with Obama iconography have hit the Central Ward like an orange blizzard.

The Osborne campaign sizes up the contest similarly.

In their sights, they see Bell, a former councilman, school board member for nearly 30 years and retired labor official with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Workers Union, who combines name ID and an alliance with time-tested political infrastructure.

In a race to fill a vacant seat on the Newark City Council in the Central Ward, union rep. Eddie Osborne continues to draw considerable dollars from his friends in Labor.

According to his filing this week with the state Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC), Osborne pulled in $40,800, with contributions ranging from ironworkers ($8,200) to the NJ Laborers PAC ($8,200) to the Building and Construction Trades of Essex County ($2,600).

Osborne is fighting for a seat on the council in a field of 13 candidates jockeying to replace former Councilwoman Dana Rone, whom an assignment judge dumped from the governing body this past summer after Rone exhausted her appeals in an obstruction of justice case.

County Chairman Phil Thigpen: Politicker photo 

NEWARK - It was appropriate that their office should stand across the street from the War Memorial. Sized up as a group, they were the veterans of a lot of Essex County wars.

The office setting, too, underscored tough times, like a set-piece out of "Glengarry Glen Ross.".

A former Countrywide home loan office that went belly up in a bad economy, this storefront a few doors down from the Robert Treat Hotel now houses the county’s Obama campaign headquarters, which officially opened Monday.

"You could say we’re one good thing to come out of them going out of business," said West Ward Councilman Ronald C. Rice, county campaign coordinator, standing in the split level, nearly wallpapered over now with Obama campaign signs.

Sources say that Newark Mayor Cory Booker will endorse Eddie Osborne for the Central Ward City Council seat.  Osborne, a union organizer with close ties to the Booker camp, is seeking the seat of Dana Rone, who was removed from office by a Superior Court Judge after her conviction on charges that she interfered with police during a routine traffic stop of her nephew. 

Newark Council President Mildred Crump with Brendan Gill, campaign manager for Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park): Politicker photo 

DENVER - The Rone drama drones on even though it’s Denver and not Newark.

Mayor Cory Booker, who today is scheduled to speak at the Black Caucus Town Hall at the convention center, says he would prefer a woman representative in the Central Ward.

His first choice is ousted Councilwoman Dana Rone, whom an assignment judge released from her elected duties last month after concluding that the councilwoman’s punishment for using her office to obstruct justice merited being barred for life from public office.

Rone remains in appeals mode. Meanwhile, support for former Central Ward Councilman Charles Bell - vanquished by the Booker Team in 2006 - grows, according to Newark sources.