NEWARK - The West Ward Irish lost their hold on Newark politics when Hugh Addonizio defeated Mayor Leo Carlin in a contest that transformed parishes and living rooms into Irish versus Italian war zones, with scattered camps going to Addonizio in the end to change the era. 

John O'Shea remembers. 

His mother was Italian and a backer of Addonizio's. His father, an immigrant from the Old Country, loved Carlin.    "In the East Ward, which was a mix of everything in those days, every area had a parish," recalled the Union County operative who grew up in Down Neck.    

"My mother went to the Italian church, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and my dad went to St. James, the Irish parish. Monsignor Begley, when he got in the pulpit, he would preach politics.  

"Me, I lived right in the middle of the street; of course, my mother made us go to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, which was hard when your name is O'Shea and you're sitting in a classroom with all Italians."   

That street in 1962 resembled the divide that ran up the middle of the O'Shea family living room.    

"In every Irish parade or hall, you saw nothing but Carlin signs and all over the city, you could see Addonizio banners, it was really something to watch in those days - like something you see in the movies with Spencer Tracy - that type of politics," said O'Shea.     

A tall, handsome Irish Teamster from Local 478 with a carnation in his lapel who campaigned in a stagecoach, Carlin as a city commissioner had successfully fought for a strong mayor form of government - and delivered.   

Among Newarkers facing an April 20th School Board election, the word on the street is not Hollywood's Avatar, but Brick City's own Shavar, as in 35-year old Shavar Jeffries, a civil rights attorney and former chief counsel with the state Attorney General's Office who ran the state's juvenile justice system and is now pursuing a seat on the School Board.

"Education is undoubtedly the most important issue we face as a city," said the married father of two and founding president of TEAM Academy Charter School. "Kids are absolutely the treshhold issue around which everything else revolves. Our babies deserve stronger and more community-rooted schools."

Child of a single mother who was killed when he was 10, Jeffries grew up with his grandmother in the South Ward, heavily dependent on the Boys and Girls Club before obtaining a scholarship to attend Seton Hall Prep and later going on to graduate from Duke University and Columbia University Law School.

Early in his carer, he defended the University of Michigan in affirmative-action litigation challenging its admissions policies, and represented Black farmers denied farming loans by the United States government. Later, he represented 30,000 children denied free tutoring services under the No Child Left Behind Act before moving to the AG's Office. 

"I've been blessed to do for my family what I want others to do for theirs, and that's the reason I'm running," said Jeffries, running with school psychologist Ivan Lamourt and Shanique L. Davis Speight on a ticket that has the backing of North Ward Democratic Party leader Steve Adubato, Sr.

HILLSIDE - Sworn into office in front of a cast of attendees proud to welcome him to the ranks of area renegade political figures, independent Hillside Mayor Joe Menza still doesn't discourage the image of himself in this Democratic town as Chris Christie in miniature, acting out at the local level what the new governor is attempting to do on a larger scale in Trenton with a legislature dominated by the opposing party.

For ground-zero Menza foe and Union County Democratic Chair Charlotte DeFilippo, it's an unacceptable comparison - even when she considers the antagonistic potential of a surging statewide Republican like Christie.

"An insult to the sitting governor," DeFilippo said when asked to comment on the parallel lines running through Menza and Republican Christie's political careers. "I can't let you say that, that's an awful insult, I'm not joking. Stop."

As Christie last week presented his proposal to the Democratic Party-dominant legislature to close a $2.5 billion budget gap, the Hillside Township Council, 6-2 in favor of Team DeFilippo, wrangled over a $42 million budget with a proposed 6.5% tax increase, which Menza wants chopped. 

Despite the on-paper edge for DeFilippo, the council stalemated, 3-3-1. 

"You think Hillside is immune to everything that's going on around us?" asked Menza. "A Six percent increase? Really? Let's take a closer look at that 60% of the budget compacted with salaries, wages and perks."

NEWARK - The people will judge Central Ward Councilman Charles Bell, said a disappointed Clifford Minor, Mayor Cory Booker's challenger in the May 11th municipal election. 

"Charles Bell has been around for some time and the people have a strong affection for Charles Bell," said Minor. "I and members of my team were upset about his change. We thought he would have at least talked to us since many of us worked very hard for him. The question for the people of the Central Ward will be whether they feel betrayed by Mr. Bell."

This is a bitter story.

When he famously defeated Booker's candidate in 2008 and landed on the Council as the Central Ward councilman, Bell was supposed to be the guy who was going to soften up the Booker franchise and help topple it from the inside.

That was the strategy anyway.

Stung by Booker allies hoisting campaign signs that read "Charles Bell equals corruption and waste," Bell at his swearing-in ceremony conveyed an emblem of dissent to gleeful former Sharpe James supporters and other discarded council people like Ras Baraka and Gayle Cheneyfield-Jenkins.

But something happened to Bell once he arrived on the council.

NEWARK - Not set yet but building toward April 20th, the field for the Newark School Board elections features a North Ward-backed team headed by a man Newark insiders say could be a future big time citywide candidate: civil rights attorney/Seton Hall Law School Professor Shavar Jeffries.

If Mayor Cory Booker had the Ivy League credentials without the Newark childhood - a combination that grates on the nerves of some older guard voters - the 35-year old Jeffries possesses the South Ward background in addition to degrees from Duke and Columbia. 

He heads the Steve Adubato-backed School Board ticket, replacing Board chair Sammy Gonzalez, who was jettisoned this year as he faces state charges of absentee ballot fraud in connection with the 2007 campaign of his wife, state Sen. M. Teresa Ruiz (D-Newark).

On the team with Jeffries are school psychologist Ivan Lamourt and Shanique L. Davis Speight - wife of Central Ward Democratic Committeeman Andre Speight and a political piece in Adubato's ongoing effort to strengthen ties in the Central Ward. If the Adubato-backed Jeffries proves an emergent political force, his South Ward roots would stretch an Adubato lifeline even farther south.

NEWARK - A rumba beat shook the top velveteen carpeted floor of the Newark Club in a glass-enclosed room jutting 22 stories above the Ironbound, with New York discernible out there on the other side of swamplands as North Ward Democratic leader Steve Adubato entered and blended into the crowd.

"Luis's family," he said, the voice leaden with lack of intrigue, his face a mask of gravity behind glasses - betraying no irony.

At-Large Councilman Luis Quintana floated happily among his guests - a chunk of the Newark political establishment, including Adubato, here to back up the politician in pursuit of what most reckon would be an unprecedented fifth council term if he wins on May 11th. 

"Yes, I support him," said Adubato. "Family."

A member of the Booker Team who built his citywide name as Sharpe James's deputy mayor in the mid-1980's and early 1990's, Quintana has consistently been the top vote-getter among at-large candidates, blending institutional presence with a twist of unpredictability. 

NEWARK - The political landscape in the North Ward is too devastated right now for war, insist sources whose propensity even for intrigue has been blunted by a state Attorney General's Office investigation into absentee ballot fraud. 

"I'm focused on my campaign; of course, there's still time for people to pick up petitions, but there's nothing happening so far," said North Ward Councilman Anibal Ramos, a member of the Booker Team and ally of North Ward Democratic leader Steve Adubato.

But just because Ramos - like his ally in the West Ward, Councilman Ronald C. Rice - won't receive a serious challenge in the North Ward, don't expect exhaustion and natural conflation of political factions to eliminate every vestige of a contest up here, even though the action will engage the at-large candidates from the North Ward more than North Ward organization man Ramos.

Such competition could benefit a North Ward Democratic organization that ultimately has a longer-range objective as it struggles to regroup: citywide control and election of a mayor from within its own ranks four years from now, most conceivably Ramos, say sources.

In short, it's not spent emotions alone that have Adubato's people resigned to the old idea that there are hard races against opposition and soft races. In the former contests, if you see an opponent trying to get into a political event with a handful of campaign flyers, you make sure he doesn't enter. In a softer atmosphere, you let him in and you let him work the room.

NEWARK - Blood dictates in Newark politics, or has, anyway, for years.

While machines play hard, families for three decades have been as fundamental to the game, among them the Paynes, Adubatos, Rices', James's, Tuckers, Barakas and Cheneyfields.

Mayor Cory Booker and his challenger, Clifford Minor -who's never held elected office - in and of themselves defy the classic branding of political family patriarchs, but each has teamed in this cycle with members of old school Newark political kin, in this case the families Rice, Payne, Baraka and James.

As an outsider coming in, Booker was always alert to that connective tissue.

When the new-look politico began peddling his Generation X brand ten years ago, his growing team of allies went to several scions, among them Ronald C. Rice and John Sharpe James, sons of two longtime allies: state Sen. Ronald L. Rice (D-Newark) and Mayor Sharpe James.

The pitch centered around the argument that the old guys had been in power too long and needed to be challenged.

It was the most powerful moment in new Governor Chris Christie’s inaugural address by far.  Christie looked directly at new Senate President Steve Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, who are Democrats, and asked them to join him at the podium.  Both of them looked surprised.  Christie then said; “We in office must not shrink from the challenge, we must rise to it. So today, right now, I ask Senator Sweeney and Speaker Oliver to come and stand with me, please, and join in a handshake of resolve and friendship.” 

There was spontaneous applause that lasted for nearly a minute.  I know Trenton pretty well, and as a former legislator and now a journalist, I have sat through countless speeches given by governors.  It takes a lot to get legislators from both parties to spontaneously stand and enthusiastically applaud, especially for this long.

NEWARK - Charon Motayne knows her opponents will bank on invoking one word to blow up her candidacy for Central Ward council. 

"Republican."

It's already happening.

Bring up the name "Motayne" to anyone in either city government or politics and before too long he or she mentions the fledgling candidate's party affiliation by way of hitting the ejector button.

Anyway, they insist, while turning to what many regard as much more competitive territory in the South Ward, Central Ward Councilman Charles Bell is virtually unbeatable. Bell had Adubato muscle behind him in 2008, combined with some state Sen. Ronald L. Rice (D-Newark) street heft when he beat Booker's union-assisted candidate. Now, Bell has joined the Booker team, effectively sapping the ward of any significant political rift.

But Motayne, 52, believes Bell's affiliation with the mayor has weakened - not strengthened - him, and vaunts her own party creds in this overwhelmingly Democratic Party-run and registered city as a show of true independence.

And she has other weapons to be reckoned with, she argues.

"Everyone knows I have been a Republican since the day I was registered to vote," says the CPA and Central Ward diehard, daughter of Essex County Freeholder Blonnie Watson (a Democrat), who is running as a May 11th muncipal elections ally of Booker challenger Clifford Minor.