Phil Thigpen

Essex County Democratic Party Chairman Phil Thigpen 

NEWARK - Essex County Committee Chairman Phil Thigpen today confirmed to PolitickerNJ.com that he would pursue another term as chair.

"We’re going to go again," he said in his office at the Robert Treat Hotel.

There is peace in Essex County: Adrienne Davis has dropped her bid to run for Essex County Democratic Chairman, and incumbent Phil Thigpen is now expected to run unopposed for a fourth term next week.

Essex County Democratic Chairman Phil Thigpen is telling Democratic leaders that he will seek re-election to a fourth two-year term when the party reorganizes next week.  Thigpen faces a challenge from former Essex County Freeholder Adrienne Davis, who has the support of Newark Democratic powerhouse Steve Adubato, Sr.

County Executive Joe DiVincenzoNEWARK - The Essex County Executive and Newark’s senior senator today both panned a proposal by North Ward Democratic leader Steve Adubato and a few others to dump County Chairman Phil Thigpen in favor of a longtime member of Adubato’s inner circle.

County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo and state Sen. Ronald Rice (D-Newark) pledged their full support for Thigpen, and denounced Adubato’s attempted power play to deliver the chairmanship to his friend, Adrianne Davis.

"Steve’s a guy who wants his epitaph to be, ‘I controlled everything in my life,’ but he’s just a guy with a big ego, who wants everyone to kiss his behind like we’re out here picking a bunch of cotton bales, black, white and Latino, all of us," Rice said. "To hell with Steve."

Himself a longtime Adubato ally who came up out of the North Ward, DiVincenzo stopped short of Rice’s all-out assault on his friend and political mentor, but was clear in his disapproval.

After failing to secure party line, Terrance Bankston bows out of freeholder raceVanquished by the Essex County Democratic Party machine this week, Terrance Bankston said he regards the leadership’s rejection of his freeholder at-large candidacy as a direct snub of Mayor Cory Booker, and a failure to reward hard campaign work.

But no matter, he says now that his candidacy is over - he means to return to Newark’s South Ward to labor on behalf of district leader candidates as part of an effort to provide an alternative to the machine of U.S. Rep. Donald Payne (D-12) and Payne ally Essex County Chairman Phil Thigpen.

“It was disrespectful to the mayor, and what was even more insulting about the situation was we didn’t just go to the table expecting to get put on the slate, we went out and worked for it,” said the 25-year old employee of the Booker administration.

Essex County Democratic Chairman Phil Thigpen faced tremendous pressure this weekend to deny Frank Lautenberg the organization line and declare an open primary in the U.S. Senate race. It was suggested to Thigpen, presumably by party leaders sympathetic to Rob Andrews' candidacy, that he could avoid offending one faction and secure his own re-election with an open primary. But Rep. Donald Payne, a Lautenberg backer, reportedly leaned on Thigpen -- his cousin -- and in the end, Thigpen gave Lautenberg the line.

But since Thigpen has been known to change his mind at the last minute, Lautenberg's supporters -- led by Senate President Richard Codey -- have recruited a slate of Freeholder candidates just in case.

“It is easy enough to look back at 2007 and pass judgment”, Tom Moran penned in a recent column.  Given his recent hire at PSE&G, it’s seems fair to look back and at least ask some questions.

Robert Kennedy, Jr. in Passaic on Monday night, flanked by U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, left, and Assemblyman Thomas Giblin.

Arguing that his presidential candidate possesses a unique combination of toughness and persuasive power, Robert Kennedy, Jr. electrified a tent-ful of fellow Hillary Clinton supporters on Monday night at a private home in Passaic.

"I was very skeptical at first because I knew she was coming in under the same charges as my father did, which were that she was a carpetbagger," Kennedy, a Westchester, N.Y. resident, said of Clinton’s appeal to him when she first prepared to run for his father’s old Senate seat.

Kennedy said Clinton faced tremendous hostility, especially in traditionally Republican upstate New York - where a Senate candidate must win if he or she is to win the state, in Kennedy’s words.

Essex County Democratic Chairman Phil Thigpen’s faux pas today was compounded by Clinton New Jersey Co-Chairman John Graham.  PolitickerNJ.com posted a flyer Thigpen sent out publicizing the opening of Hillary Clinton’s Essex County campaign headquarters, with the headline: “Good job, Phil Thigpen.” Graham, thinking the post was kudos to Thigpen for publicizing the event, sent out a copy of the Inside Edge item to his campaign insider e-mail list.  What Graham missed was that the headline was full of sarcasm: Thigpen’s flyer used the Republican elephant instead of the Democratic donkey!

This is the graphic that was included in Essex County Democratic Chairman Phil Thigpen’s e-mail announcing the opening of Hillary Clinton’s Essex County campaign headquarters – exactly as sent.