NEWARK - The door to Peter Pantoliano's headquarters swings open.

A pair of operatives sit inside and they're so intent on the work, they don't notice a visitor.  

They run down strategy.

"We're working very hard," confirms the East Ward candidate by cellphone.

He's at City Hall right now. Just left headquarters.

But he plans to be back at HQ. Pronto.

A lot of the merchants around Ferry Street support Pantoliano's challenge of veteran East Ward Councilman Augusto Amador. The local optometrist counts himself a part of the business community.

"The ones who don't have Peter Pantoliano signs in their windows are scared to put them up," says Pantoliano.

But Amador starts with a base of 2,600 to 3,000 votes in the core Portuguese community in a ward that usually maxes out municipally at around 5,000 votes. Allies of one of Amador's most solid backers, longtime East Ward operative Joe Parlavecchio say if Pantoliano - an Italian-American like himself - can beat Amador, it's time for Parlavecchio to rethink retirement.

Not happening, he says.

However, if the city as a whole lacks the edge of a major campaign contest - "quietist I can ever remember an election year at this time," observes one South Ward insider - Pantoliano, notwithstanding the odds, is undisputably making an enthusiastic effort to unseat incumbent Amador.

NEWARK - Repeatedly ribbed for his less than scintillating personality but chalked up as an effective local lawmaker, East Ward Councilman Augusto Amador stepped forward this afternoon as the mostly unsmiling but hardly unwilling Ironbound equation in Team Booker's re-election strategy. 

"I may not have the personality of the prototypical politician, but I've been around a while and I know that all it comes down to in the end is what can you do for the people you represent," Amador told a room brimming with local political infrastructure, including several of his running mates, the District 29 Legislative team, among them East Ward Assemblyman Albert Coutinho (D-Newark), and beloved local product Sheriff Armando Fontoura.

"There is no alternative out there," Amador added. "Don't look for any other candidates."

Even as the councilman worked the room, however, challenger Peter Pantoliano walked the ward, trying to drum up support to pluck Amador out of City Hall.

"I walked two districts today," the Ferry Street optometrist would later tell PolitickerNJ.com. "People are overwhelmingly saying it's time for a change. The majority of the Portuguese people say it's time."

NEWARK - The mood in this old factory turned corner room campaign headquarters was blunted even in the usually festive Ironbound.

Any confluence of less than ideal circumstances - prickly relations between Mayor Cory Booker's people and East Ward Councilman Augusto Amador, a downbeat economy, or just Saturday fatigue - would have to include Thursday's news, visible everywhere here in a Brazilian community coffee shop tabloid featuring a front page photo of former Deputy Mayor Ron Salahuddin, deputy mayor of public safety for Mayor Cory Booker, indicted Thursday on extortion and corruption charges. 

"I think the mayor said it all when he said that if this is true, the deputy mayor broke the level of trust he had," Amador told PolitickerNJ.com. "Looking at the transcripts, all of this actually all began right after everybody was sworn-in."

Now, U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman made clear that Booker helped the feds close the case against Salahuddin, and had absolutely nothing to do with the charges leveled - a point amplified today by Pablo Fonseca, campaign manager for the Booker Team.

Present among Amador's campaign cadre at the East Ward kickoff in a statement of campaign unity (given Fonseca's friendly relations with Amador's opponent, businessman Peter Pantoliano),  Fonseca said he has not read the indictment against Salahuddin.

NEWARK - A framed portrait of a jet-black haired Augusto Amador in an El Greco pose stands on the wall here in Little City Hall where East Ward Democratic Committee Chairman Angelo DiFederico says they just processed 600 or 700 tax forms and feel confident about Amador's formal kick-off a little less than two weeks from now.

Amador himself isn't here.

That's because shortly, the little city halls occupied by Booker allies in all the five wards will empty and converge on Symphony Hall as Newarkers - tantalized by the prospect of bridge and tunnel projects, promised but not yet underway, and buffeted in the meantime by an unemployment rate of 17% - will gather to hear incumbent Mayor Cory Booker deliver his fourth State of the City address three months in front of Election Day.

"Like any other city we are in midst of a recession," said Assemblywoman L. Grace Spencer (D-Newark). "We are struggling to rebound from this recession. We have a record number of citizens who are unemployed, but we are trying to be entrepreneurial and to create employment opportunities. We are trying to empower people who have small businesses with small business loans and contracts and encouraging new businesses to open."

"Right now, Newark is a city on the move," said South Ward Councilman Oscar James II, intently optimistic even while inevitably acknowledging the larger landscape.

"My only problem is the economy right now," James said. "But we are laying the foundation right now for future economic development."

Running in what many observers believe will be a singularly competitive ward race, the councilman considered the Booker administration's three most important achievements.

"I would say overall commitment to crime reduction and safety - not the numbers - but giving police and fire the tools to do the job. That commitment is there. Also, the commitment to our young people through parks.

NEWARK- If he enjoys the affections of inner players but lacks organizational support, it least Peter Pantoliano has the Sundance Channel. 

His East Ward council candidacy stumbled early - Councilman Augusto Amador's allies would say fatally - when Pantoliano acknowledged that his campaign fudged information about where he received an online PhD - from a non-existent school, in fact - an embarrassment that prompted a retreat as fast as his partisans had hoped to cry "Charge!"

The tough headline compounded an already existing problem, for the East Ward businessman had originally hoped to land the support of Mayor Cory Booker through Booker political brain Pablo Fonseca - backing that never materialized.

Still, Pantoliano is enjoying Booker largesse, if only indirectly and in a way that may entertain cable television audiences if fail to generate votes in the East Ward, as a camera crew from the Sundance Channel's "Brick City" television series - drawn to Newark by the Booker magnet - shadows Pantoliano on the campaign trail.

NEWARK - That Ironbound contest between Councilman Augusto "Augie" Amador and optometrist Peter Pantoliano has gotten ugly early, with both men pummeling each other on petition pick-up day and the latter apologizing for what he says was a "horrible mistake."

Pantoliano equated demonstrable "ineffectiveness" from Amador's 12-year term in office with a kind of corruption, swiftly prompting Amador's allies to specifically point out the challenger's factually faulty website and self-promoting flyers.

Pantoliano distributed handouts noting the PhD he received from "Raritan Valley University," apparently a nonexistent variation on Raritan Valley Community College, provoking a backwash of Amador criticism.

"The girl who did my bio was confused," admitted Pantoliano. "My degree was not Raritan Valley, it was from an online accrediting firm.

"I've never claimed to be a medical doctor," Pantoliano added. "The degree I have is from an online accrediting firm, often frowned upon by people who haven't received an education. It's the Board of Online Universities Accreditation. Anybody can go there and verify it."

NEWARK - City Hall: a hammered out homage to rustbelt royalty with Corinthian columns hoisting four stone and stucco stories uplifting a rotunda that shapes and centers the whole relatively squat structure, cast on the exterior with gold leaf to shame any statehouse.

There's Mayor Cory Booker on the top floor, smiling in the glare of the camera crew that hustles with back steps down the hallway, chronicling the mayor's movements as he makes his way to the clerk's office to pick up petitions to file to run for a second term. 

Accompanying Booker - as part of an entourage that looks like a space shuttle crew roll-out - are the nine sitting city council members, all running as members of the Booker Team.

"Look, I'm not going to say things are the greatest in the world in Newark," says At-Large Councilman Luis Quintana, a remnant of the Sharpe James era who made the transition to the new look Booker Team in 2006 and stuck, despite his ongoing antagonism with the North Ward Democratic Committee. 

"I support all my colleagues," he assures, when asked about North Ward Councilman Anibal Ramos, who's also part of the Booker behemoth.

"Am I closer to some of my colleagues than others," asks South Ward Councilman Oscar James II. "Yes, but this is my team, and I will work as hard for this team as any other team. I was taught at a very young age that politics creates strange bedfellows."

James, of course, is facing arguably the stiffest test down in the sprawling South Ward, where activist (and son of poet Amiri Baraka) Ras Baraka plans to mount an aggressive challenge in front of this year's May 11th municipal contest.

But there are other challengers to the Team.

NEWARK - Although they intend to prepare for a fight - just in case - Councilman Augusto "Augie" Amador's allies mostly dismiss next year's East Ward council race as an overhyped contest between their constituent service driven veteran who may be short on personality behind a razor sharp moustache but gets things done, and a blown up interloper with people skills and an easy smile already reeling in the undertow of Newark politics. But if the competitive potential of Amador v. Pantoliano sustained blows when the former secured the support of both Mayor Cory Booker and Assemblyman Albert Coutinho (D-Newark), and a big chunk of the business community, businessman Peter Pantoliano still gives himself more than a shot to topple the third-term incumbent councilman - in part based on his resume and private sector acumen but no less on his self-professed conviviality and approachability, qualities he says Amador lacks. Because they like him, bon vivant Pantoliano insists Booker and Coutinho won't be aggressive parties to a cause that destroys him, despite the East Ward Democratic Club's best efforts. "It's no secret there's no love lost between Al and Augie," the challenger says of Coutinho. "Anybody in the game knows that. If you don't know that, you're fooling yourself. Our friendship is strong. At Jack the Jeweler's Christmas party, Albert came close to endorsing me. If he had had a few more cocktails, it would have been a full blown kiss on the cheek. Unfortunately, he's beholden to the machine." The machine, in this case, as Pantoliano sees it, runs according to the will of East Ward politico Joe Parlavecchio, whose longstanding alliance with North Ward icon Steve Adubato maintains the power structure in the East Ward and enables Amador to remain the councilman. 

Then there's Booker, whose ebullience gells more with Pantoliano than Amador, notes the challenger.

PERTH AMBOY - Local level jockeying is already underway in advance of next year's mayoral and muncipal contests. Included below are some of the more intriguing prospects: 

Paterson

Two-term Mayor Jose "Joey" Torres projects an understanding of politics as a pragmatic undertaking, and speaks of the coming campaign with no change of tone, teeth-grinding rancor or demagogic speechifying. For Torres, Council President Jeffrey Jones, Councilman Andre Sayegh and former Police Chief Larrry Spagnola are obstacles.

In the mayor's eyes, the councilmen may prove worthy one day of becoming mayor, but they're too young and inexperienced and lack the business acumen necessary to helm New Jersey's third biggest city.

A former Marine, Jones has a built-in base of African American support. Last week he told PolitickerNJ.com he recognizes his challenge in fighting the perception mostly stirred up by his political antagonists that he is simply the black candidate in the race.

If Torres suffers from headlines that depict him as a heartless pay-to-play machine intent on development to the exclusion of other city problems, Jones's critics say he's good in attack mode but sometimes does not follow up with alternatives.

As for Sayegh, the inspirational Booker-speak and snappy one-liners contribute to a charismatic presence - and citywide political reach the councilman built as head of a coalition of nonprofit organizations - but the Ward 6 wunderkind has reached that stage of his career where, like Jones, voters will be waiting to hear detailed blueprint contrasts to the Torres model.  

The big issues: crime and taxes.

Bashed on the street early for not projecting the energy to match and mete out the kind of verbal punishment opponents say Mayor Cory Booker deserves, retired municipal Judge Clifford Minor said that's not his style, and though he knows also he won't have the money to keep up with Booker next year, he intends to win his long-shot challenge.

In his particular low-key, grassroots way.

"No, I'm not fired up like Sharpe James, but I don't think you need to run heated campaigns in order to win, and I don't believe you have to run a negative campaign," Minor told PolitickerNJ.com. "My strength is going to come from grassroots support, and there's recent evidence of that kind of support offsetting the money advantage. Gov-elect Chris Christie was absolutely well under the numbers of Governor Corzine in terms of money. Look at Mayor (Mike) Bloomberg, who had a much closer race than he anticipated, while significantly outspending the challenger.

"I'm grasroots, I'm not afraid of the community," added Minor, a former police officer and prosecutor. "I don't need 15 cops to walk with me on the streets. I'll be knocking on doors and walking. That's worth more than the $8 million that he (Booker) has."

Minor admits the incumbent may be a good politician, but seriously questions the younger man's ability to manage the sprawling power center of Newark. Although this is his first political campaign, he says he personally effectively administered Newark Municipal Court. It wasn't paying for itself, and when he left, he left it solvent, he says.