Vernon Walton

The Bergen County Republican and Democratic chairmen both have a lot riding on the November 3rd election.

Not only is Bergen - the most populous of the state's 21 counties - expected to be hotly contested between Democratic Governor Jon Corzine and Republican gubernatorial nominee Christopher Christie, but that race will likely have down-ballot implications that could change the course of the county's politics, put control of its government at stake in 2010 and shape the reputations of its two relatively new party chairs. 

The political fortunes of both men - and both parties -- are pegged to the gubernatorial race. 

For GOP chairman Robert Yudin, having Christie at the top of the ticket opposing an unpopular Democratic governor gives his minority party its best shot at picking up a freeholder seat since Lisa Randall won one in 2003.  It's a county that Christie's campaign has paid a lot of attention to, aware that they are not exempt from the New Jersey political wisdom that Republicans cannot win statewide without it.  The flip side for Yudin is that, if Christie wins Bergen but neither of the freeholder candidates win, he will get the blame for a missed opportunity and potentially suffer the consequences when his first term is up in June, 2010. 

Democratic Chairman Michael Kasparian, a developer, has an entirely different but equally difficult situation.  Last winter he took over control of a party that holds all but one county-wide office.  But it has seen its share of problems since the indictment of its powerful former chairman, Joe Ferriero, on corruption charges that he will have to fight in court in October - the peak of the campaign season.  Fundraising - Ferriero's specialty - is more difficult with the economy in shambles, and the party's debt picture is not yet clear, since Kasparian has not yet released an audit he commissioned.  If Republicans pull off a victory, Kasparian risks being saddled with the blame for the party's decline. 

If Republicans win even one seat on the freeholder board this year, they'll have a shot at control next year, when three Democratic freeholders, Sheriff Leo McGuire and County Executive Dennis McNerney are up for reelection.  If Christie is in office, Yudin said, Bergen Republicans will feel a sense of momentum. 

"New Jersey is considered a blue state. Bergen is considered a blue county.  And this is really considered a meaningful election," said Yudin, who said that a victory for his two freeholder candidates and maybe even some assembly candidates would mean that "the Republican Party in the state and the Republican Party in Bergen County is back." 

Yudin knows the pain of losing.  He ran for freeholder unsuccessfully three times before he wrested the party's chairmanship from Rob Ortiz in June of last year.  His 2008 freeholder candidates - Chris Calabrese, Jeff Heller and Paul Duggan -- all lost, but by narrower margins than recent races and in a year when Democrats benefited immensely from the Obama wave (Republican County Clerk Kathleen Donovan, who ran a campaign separate from the freeholders, still managed to be the county candidates' top vote getter). 

Now, Republicans are running Mahwah Councilman Rob Hermansen and Paramus activist John Driscoll against Democratic incumbents Julie O'Brien and Vernon Walton.

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Republicans might be showing up at political events in Hudson County, but the real battleground of the race for Governor is in Bergen.  No Republican has ever won a statewide election in New Jersey without carrying Bergen County.  In 2005, Jon Corzine beat Douglas Forrester in Bergen by fourteen percentage points and a margin of 34,302 votes. 

To win, Christopher Christie has to turn that around.  The last GOP statewide candidate to carry Bergen was Robert Franks, who received 3,932 votes more than Corzine in the 2000 U.S. Senate race.  Corzine knew that when he picked State Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck) as his running mate. If Christie carries Bergen by a decent margin, Republicans could oust Democratic Freeholders Julie O'Brien and Vernon Walton with their flotsam and jetsam challengers

This year, Corzine is defending Bergen without the help of Joseph Ferriero, whose fundraising prowess and campaign skills turned the state's largest county from solid Republican to solid Democratic.  Ferriero resigned as County Chairman last year following his indictment on federal corruption charges; his trial begins this fall.  For the last seven years, Ferriero has been in the top ten on the PolitickerNJ.com Power List; he was at #7 last year.  The new Democratic Chairman, Michael Kasparian, starts out at #94.   The problem for Christie is that the relatively new Republican County Chairman, Robert Yudin, isn't on the list at all. While Kasparian still hasn't figured out how to be a County Chairman - Corzine's executive order targeting criminally charged Ridgefield Mayor Anthony Suarez is evidence of that -- Yudin hasn't cast himself in the mold of predecessors like Nelson Gross, Anthony Statile and John Inganamort either.

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Although the lawsuit against Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa names a sitting Democratic freeholder as a co-defendant and charges that another Democratic freeholder who’s up for reelection this year benefited from Zisa’s alleged shakedowns of subordinate police officers, Bergen County Republican Chairman Bob Yudin is not going to make an issue out of it just yet.

“It’s really too early to tell. These are allegations and in a civil suit a person can make any kind of allegations they want,” he said.

The suit, filed by six current Hackensack police officers and one former member of the force, names Tomas Padilla – a Hackensack policeman who has been a freeholder since 2005 and is a hopeful to be appointed U.S. Marshall – as a defendent along with Zisa, who it accuses of pressuring officers to donate to his and Padilla's political campaigns.  It also alleges that a co-defendant, Local 9 union President Phillip Carroll, donated union dues to fund campaigns for Zisa and Padilla without the plaintiffs’ consent. 

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Charles Stile's must-read column in The Record today underscored what many in Bergen County and around the state have been saying for many months: newly-elected Bergen County Democratic Chairman Michael Kasparian has been reluctant to put an infrastructure in place that would ensure a Democratic victory this November for Jon Corzine and freshmen Freeholders Vernon Walton and Julie O'Brien.

Unlike his predecessor Joseph Ferriero, Kasparian has never served as an elected official and has no experience in running any type of political organization.  He has surrounded himself with Ferriero holdovers, including BCDO spokesman and Trenton lobbyist Bill Maer, leading some to complain that he is sending the wrong message to the voters about cleaning up the county organization even as he has refused to utilize some of the organizational methods Ferriero had in place to turn Bergen County into a Democratic stronghold.

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The Bergen County Republican Organization will hold a convention tonight to pick two Freeholder candidates and settle a hotly contested race for State Committeewoman.  Four candidates are seeking a shot to challenge Democratic incumbents Julie O'Brien and Vernon Walton: Mahwah Councilman Robert Hermansen, Paramus GOP activist John Driscoll, '08 Freeholder candidates Christopher Calabrese, and perennial candidate Sabaudin "Sab' Skenderi.  The front runners are Hermansen and Driscoll, who have been endorsed by the BCRO Policy Committee and won the Northeast Republican Organization (NERO) convention two weeks ago. 

The real race to watch is for State Committeewoman, where Eleonore Nissley, the grand dame of the Bergen County GOP, is seeking a return to the seat she held from 1965 to 2005.  Nissley narrowly lost her bid for an eleventh term to 25-year-old Collette Campbell, who managed Steve Lonegan's campaign for Governor.  Campbell resigned her seat earlier this year. A former GOP State Vice Chairwoman, Nissley faces competition from Mary Conway, who has the backing of GOP County Chairman Robert Yudin, and former Franklin Lakes Councilwoman Pearl Spector.

Bergen Republicans will also endorse a candidate for Governor.  Former U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie is the favorite to win.  He has dominated the endorsement game in Lonegan's home county and won 91% of the vote at the NERO convention.  Lonegan has stopped campaigning for organizational endorsements and made an unsuccessful effort to get Yudin to remove his name from the ballot.  Even though Lonegan is not actively seeking votes, it will be telling to see how well he does on his home turf.

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Englewood Mayor Michael Wildes may be stepping down after his term expires, but he is still expected to play a major role in the upcoming election.

"I would be shocked if there was not a Democratic primary. I would not object to that," said Councilman Scott Reddin, an adversary of Wildes who so far is the only declared candidate for mayor.

Politics in this ethnically diverse and heavily Democratic city of 26,000 have been driven over the last six years by the rivalry between the headline-generating Wildes, a fundraising powerhouse who has been candid that he aspires to higher office and who has been a key ally of former county Democratic Chairman Joseph Ferriero, and his adversaries, who hold a 4-1 majority on the council.

For his mayoral bid, Reddin has the support of fellow council members Charlotte Bennett Schoen, Ken Rosenzweig and Gordon Johnson, who is also a state assemblyman (Johnson ran in 2006 to take out Wildes-backed incumbent Vernon Walton, and will not seek reelection this year).  The other councilman, Jack Drakeford, is aligned with Wildes.

Reddin said that, if elected, he would govern with a much more low-key style than Wildes. Read More >

Five Republican are seeking the Bergen County Republican Organization’s nod to take on incumbent Democratic Freeholders Julie O’Brien and Vernon Walton in November.  

Altogether, six candidates filed letters of intent with Bergen County Republican Chairman Bob Yudin, although one has already withdrawn her name.  The party will award the line to the two candidates that win a convention later this year.  

Among them is Chris Calabrese, an Upper Saddle River resident with a business in Rutherford who ran last year and was the Republicans freeholder candidates' top vote getter.

The other two Republican candidates last year, Jeff Heller and Paul Duggan, have not expressed an interest in running again. 

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Englewood Mayor Michael Wildes decision not to seek a third term will become an early test for newly-elected Bergen County Democratic Chairman Michael Kasparian.  Kasparian must decide if he will award the organization line this spring to a candidate backed by the traditionally anti-organization Englewood Democratic Party, support a candidate recommended by Wildes, or seek a compromise candidate that both factions can agree upon.

According to The Record, Council President Charlotte Bennett Schoen and Councilman Scott Reddin are mulling mayoral bids.  Englewood Democratic Municipal Chair Deirdre Glenn Paul, a professor at Montclair State University, is also a potential candidate.  And some Democrats say that Rev. Vernon Walton, a Bergen County Freeholder and former Englewood Councilman, could also emerge as a mayoral candidate.

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After a relatively narrow defeat this year, former Bergen County Republican freeholder candidate Chris Calabrese plans to run again next year.

“I will be running next year,” said Calabrese, 33. “I’ve taken a little time in the last month or so just to collect my thoughts for the next election.”

Calabrese, who lives in Upper Saddle River and owns a real estate business in Rutherford, was the top Republican vote getter in an election year when the GOP capitalized on Democratic Chairman Joe Ferriero’s legal troubles to come closer to winning a seat on the all-Democratic board than in the last several election cycles. Despite having Barack Obama at the top of the ticket, Calabrese only came 8,423 votes short of incumbent Democrat David Ganz – a difference of about two percentage points.

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In North Arlington (pop. 15,181), a blue collar town in Southern Bergen County that went for John Kerry in 2004 by just six votes, John McCain beat Barack Obama by 46 votes, 49.7%-48.9%.

In the U.S. Senate race, Democrat Frank Lautenberg beat Dick Zimmer 55%-45%, with a margin of 542 votes. U.S. Rep. Steven Rothman had a 945 vote plurality (58%-42%) over Republican Vincent Micco.

Republican County Clerk Kathleen Donovan won 53%-47% (302 votes) over Democrat Diane Testa, but in the race for Freeholdder, North Arlington voters backed the Democratic incumbents, Bernadette McPherson (2,950) and David Ganz (2,785) over GOP challengers Christopher Calabrese (2,675) and Jeffrey Heller (2,567). In the race for a two-year unexpired term, Rev. Vernon Walton, the Democratic incumbent, carried North Arlington by 187 votes over Republican Paul Duggan (52%-48%).

In the race for Borough Council, Democrats held the 4-2 majority on the Borough Council. Councilman Steven Tanelli (3,513) was re-elected, along with fellow Democrat Mark Yampaglia (3,198).  They defeated Republicans James Herrmann (2,801) and James Bocchino (2,746).

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