Safanya Searcy

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.

New Jersey delegates cheer Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention in Denver Monday night: Scott Weingart Photo
DENVER - A good orator indulges in autobiography to the extent that he or she can connect to a common story, with the danger never far that the wrong points of emphasis can entrap the speaker in self congratulations.

Michelle Obama’s maternal confessional and intimate revelatory family detail treaded too close to the edges of egotism for only a handful of the New Jersey delegation, with most Democrats hailing the effort as a dead-on bull’s-eye.

They spilled into the spacious Celtic Tavern on Blake Street after the convention on Monday night, and the liquor flowed as U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park) celebrated the presidential candidate’s wife as a people’s champion.

"Her speech reached out and spoke to the common story," said Lautenberg. "It reminded me very much of my own story, growing up in Paterson, working hard, having a father who died young. She told a story that many of us can relate to."