Sandra Cunningham

The race for Mayor of Jersey City is four year away, but someone is already in the field with a poll. In a computer automated poll, voters are asked how they would vote for mayor "in light of the recent corruption arrests."  Four potential candidates were named: Sean Connors, Sandra Cunningham, Steven Fulop, and incumbent Jerramiah Healy.  Additional choices included other and undecided.

Veteran Democratic operative Joe Cardwell was arrested in July as part of Operation Bid Rig

It wasn't exactly a clandestine meeting.

Senate Majority Leader Stephen Sweeney (D-West Deptford) -- who could be the next Senate President -- was spotted last night at the Liberty House Restaurant in Jersey City dining with state Sen. Sandra B. Cunningham (D-Jersey City) and political operative Joseph Cardwell, who was arrested in July on corruption charges.

While the three ate in the restaurant's dining room, Freeholder Bill O'Dea held a low-dollar fundraiser in the catering room next door.  Two sources who attended the fundraiser reported seeing Cardwell handing out cards for his legal defense fund to guests who trickled into the restaurant's bar from the O'Dea event.   

Reached by phone, Cardwell said he ate with the two senators, but declined to elaborate on what they talked about.   

"The Senator was discussing business. I was just there," he said. 

Sweeney has been campaigning hard for the Senate Presidency, and this morning announced that he has the votes needed to topple incumbent Richard Codey (D-Roseland).  Cunningham, however, was not among the thirteen Democratic Senators he listed as supporting his bid. 

Former Assemblyman Louis Manzo (D-Jersey City), who was arrested last month for allegedly taking bribes from an FBI informant, still faces a civil suit from a former fundraiser who says he owes her $40,000 for his unsuccessful bid for the Democratic State Senate nomination in 2007.

Dannielle Transue Leigh says that Manzo paid her $2,000 per month but skipped out on the 12% sum of total money raised he agreed to pay her once the campaign was over.

The two sides are set to meet for arbitration in Superior Court tomorrow morning, but it is unlikely to resolve the dispute.  Both plan to appeal if the arbitrator rules against them, continuing a case that has dragged on since shortly after state Sen. Sandra B. Cunningham (D-Jersey City) defeated Manzo in the June, 2007 Democratic primary.

Monthly payments to Transue Leigh appear in Manzo's ELEC reports, but Manzo in an affidavit denied that he entered into a contract for fundraising services with her.

"He's under criminal investigation and he's perjured himself.  It just boggles the mind," said Transue Leigh, who originally sued for $15,000 in small claims court because she wanted to get the case over with quickly but said that, after repeated delays, she decided to go to trial for the larger sum that more accurately reflects her losses.

TRENTON – A measure sponsored by Senators Sandra Bolden Cunningham and Teresa Ruiz, which prohibits the sale and purchase of more than one handgun per person, within a 30-day period, was signed into law today.

According to the sponsors, the law will help to prevent “straw purchasing,” or purchasing a firearm for someone who is not legally allowed to buy one.

Union City Mayor/State Sen. Brian P. Stack (D-Union City), last year.

UNION CITY - Union City Mayor/state Sen. Brian P. Stack has not endorsed a candidate for governor.

Somewhere a crowd gathers in Bergen, but here in a gazebo in Hudson County, a solitary figure in white shirt sleeves stands at the precipitous edge of the palisades with the maw of the river and Hoboken and Jersey City and Manhattan below as he talks on a cellphone.

It's Stack.

"I didn't even know there was a rally today," he says, folding the phone in one hand, referring to Gov. Jon Corzine's rollout of running mate, state Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck). "Where is it? What's going on?"

It's not as though Stack's home turf is stagnant in the blaze of summertime, or as if Stack ever really has a tendency to gravitate away from Union City.

"I'm always here," he says with grin, but on this occasion it looks like an especially lonely vantage point, considering the fact that on Thursday, sections of the Democratic Party infrastructure caved with the FBI arrests of numerous political operatives and officials, most of them from Jersey City. 

If Stephen Sweeney (D-West Deptford) is successful in his bid to replace Richard Codey (D-Roseland) as Senate President in November, Senate Democrats will have to decide who will replace Sweeney as Majority Leader.   And if Sweeney challenges Codey and loses, he could face a fight to keep the job he has now.  Either way, there could be a contested race for Senate Majority Leader.

Less than two years ago, Sweeney narrowly won the #2 Senate leadership post, defeating Paul Sarlo (D-Wood-Ridge) by a 14-9 vote after Bernard Kenney (D-Hoboken) did not seek re-election.  Sarlo had Codey's strong endorsement.

Sweeney won by assembling a coalition of six South Jersey Senators, along with support from Democratic Senators in Middlesex and Union,  and Sandra Cunningham (D-Jersey City),  Brian Stack (D-Union City), and Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck).  Raymond Lesniak (D-Elizabeth) was Sweeney's kingmaker; he helped deliver five votes on the day of the election.

But Sweeney would not necessarily have the same coalition against Codey as he did against Sarlo.  He does not yet have the votes of Cunningham, Stack, Weinberg, and Joseph Vitale (D-Woodbridge), although Theresa Ruiz (D-Newark) is probably with him.

State Sen. Sandra Cunningham (D-Jersey City), vice chair of the Senate Labor Committee.

TRENTON - State Sen. Sandra Cunningham (D-Jersey City) admitted today that she was irritated with Gov. Jon Corzine for not calling her personally to discuss Corzine's nomination of County Executive Tom DeGise to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

"Let's just say I wasn't asked," Cunningham told PolitickerNJ.com moments after state Sen. Fred Madden (D-Gloucester) gaveled out today's Senate Labor Committee hearing.

Sources say DeGise discussed his nomination with Cunningham, but Cunningham allies say the senator wanted the governor to confer with her personally, which she says never happened.

Asked who she favors as a candidate for lieutenant governor on a ticket topped by the governor in his re-election bid, Cunningham said she has not considered the issue.

Asked who she could sell in Jersey City as a candidate, Cunningham said, "I haven't thought about LG. I will have a hard enough time selling the governor."

Jerramiah Healy has won three campaigns for Mayor of Jersey City in five years without ever being forced into a runoff election - the first Mayor to do that since the legendary Frank Hague won his last election in 1945. The Healy slate also won six of the seven Council seats decided in yesterday's vote, with the chance to pick up two more when Ward A Councilman Michael Sottolano and Ward F Councilwoman Viola Richardson run in a June 9 runoff election. 

Healy won 53% of the vote in a five-candidate field, besting two well-known challengers: Louis Manzo, a former Assemblyman and Hudson County Freeholder who was making his fifth bid for Mayor; and Assemblyman L. Harvey Smith, a former Acting Mayor, State Senator, and City Council President. 

But one frequent critic of the Mayor remains in office: Ward E Councilman Steven Fulop won a massive 63% of the vote against four opponents, including Guy "Squab" Catrillo, who ran on Healy' slate.  The Healy campaign, sensing Fulop's strength, essentially pulled out of the Ward E race a few weeks ago.

Assemblywoman-elect Nancy Munoz (R-Summit) becomes the first widow to directly succeed her husband in the New Jersey Legislature.   She won a special election last night to replace Eric Munoz, who passed away earlier this month at the age of 61.

After Patrick Scanlon died in August 1977, his widow, Mary Scanlon, won a November 1977 election to fill his seat.  But the same day, voters elected Joseph Papasidero to fill the remaining two months of Patrick Scanlon's term.  Mary Scanlon actually succeeded Papasidero.  (Deborah Scanlon, a Union County Freeholder, is the daughter-in-law of Patrick and Mary Scanlon.)