Zulima Farber

Essex County Prosecutor Paula Dow has asked a Superior Court Judge to terminate Dana Rone’s service as a Newark City Councilwoman following her conviction on a disorderly persons charge.  Rone has a Zulima Farber problem – she intervened on behalf of her nephew during a 2006 traffic stop.  There is some talk that the idea of removing Rone from office didn’t come from Dow, but instead from Mayor Cory Booker – once a close Rone ally (he endorsed her for his old Central Ward seat when he first ran for Mayor in 2002) and now a fierce rival.  One version of the chain of events, according to a front office source, suggests that Booker sought Rone’s removal by going through the offices of Gov.  Jon Corzine and the state Attorney General, Anne Milgram.

Congratulations to Newark City Councilwoman Dana Rone, who has emerged as the early front runner for the 2008 Zulima Farber Award. She seems to be running ahead of Annette Lartigue, a City Councilwoman from Trenton, and former Jersey City Municipal Court Judge Wanda Molina.

And newly-elected Orange Mayor Eldridge Hawkins, Jr. is now a candidate for the 2008 Oink! Oink! Wayne Bryant Award – a category that always has considerable competition in New Jersey.

Zulima Farber resigned as Attorney General in August 2006 after intervening to help her boyfriend on a routine traffic stop: Getty Images Photo
Former Attorney General Zulima Farber’s boyfriend won an appeal today, getting out of a $500 fine and community service for failing to show up to a court date.

Hamlet Goore had failed to attend the start date of his trial for driving with a suspended license, assigned by a municipal judge in 2006. Instead, Goore went on a pre-paid vacation to Mexico.

The court date was related to an infamous May, 2006 traffic stop in Fairview, where Moore was charged with driving with a suspended license and having an out-of-date registration. The license, which was suspended due to an unpaid parking ticket that Goore had taken care of before the traffic stop, was retroactively reinstated and the charge was dropped.

Anne Milgram has been a strong political ally of Governor Jon Corzine, serving as his Counsel when Corzine was in the United States Senate, and then as his First Assistant Attorney General.  Picking her as his third Attorney General in less than two years became an easy decision for Corzine.  But now, after less than five months on the job, sources close to Corzine say Milgram is “off the reservation.”  The front office does not have the same relationship it enjoyed with Zulima Farber and Stuart Rabner, and Corzine has been taking considerable heat from Democratic insiders over a subpoena served just before Election Day on the Union County Improvement Authority, where Union County Democratic Chair Charlotte DeFilippo is the Executive Director.

After Zulima Farber was forced to resign as Attorney General for using bad judgment when she involved herself in a traffic incident that involved her boyfriend.  One of the people who sought the appointment to replace her: Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli.  Molinelli, the former Bergen County Democratic Organization Treasurer, was also reportedly considered for the post after Governor Jon Corzine's election in 2005.

When is a public official’s significant other (to whom they are not related by marriage), considered their “companion” rather than their “girlfriend” or “live-in boyfriend”?

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman John Adler might be the Rodney Dangerfield of New Jersey politics. U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie referred to him as a "third-rate bureaucrat" while speaking to reporters following a speech in Mercer County today. And at a Gannett editiorial board meeting in October 2005, then-gubernatorial candidate Jon Corzine threw the Harvard Law graduate under the bus: "John Adler will not be my attorney general. We will pick the very best individual with the skills to make sure we carry out an executive order to clean up politics in this state," Corzine said.

Two months later, Corzine nominated Zulima Farber.

Several public officials today expressed surprise at the complaint filed against Supreme Court Justice Roberto Rivera-Soto, but legal insiders for years have considered the McGreevey-appointee has one of the Judiciary’s most narcissistic jurists. Even prior to his confirmation to the bench, his former adversaries were quoted in an April 2004 Star-Ledger profile describing him as “pompous,” “arrogant and abrasive,” and questioned whether he had the temperament for the post.

If Associate Justice Roberto Rivera-Soto is disciplined for using the power of his judicial post to influence the private interests of his family, will he be held to the same standards of conduct that forced Zulima Farber to resign as Attorney General of New Jersey last summer?  Rivera-Soto, who does not come up for reappointment until 2011, is accused of improper involvement in a "head-butting" dispute  involving his son and another football player during a practice touch football game last fall.  Farber was forced out of office after accusations that she used her influence in a traffic incident involving her live-in boyfriend.

The New Jersey Press Association has named The Record's Carolyn Salazar as its Journalist of The Year. Salazar broke the Zulima Farber story last summer.