Long-time 6th Ward councilman and local businessman David Roberts planned for the future last week after beating two-term incumbent Mayor Anthony Russo by a decisive 1,305-vote margin in his mayoral election victory.
Roberts’s running mates for three at-large seats on the City Council also cruised to victory. Incumbent Councilman-at-large Anthony Soares, current 4th Ward Councilman Ruben Ramos Jr., and political newcomer Carol Marsh will join Roberts on the steps of City Hall when they are sworn in on July 1.
The council also will vote in July to install someone new in Roberts’ 6th Ward council seat and Ramos’ 4th Ward seat as Ramos moves to an at-large seat.
En route to an impressive victory Tuesday, Roberts won five out of six city wards, with Russo only carrying his safe haven, the 3rd Ward on the west side of town. The final outcome had Roberts receiving almost 58 percent of the city’s votes, beating Russo 6,064 to 4,759 overall. In this highly-publicized election, 43 percent of Hoboken’s 24,597 voters turned out.
Roberts’ nearly two-to-one thrashing of Russo in Roberts’ home 6th Ward set the tone for what turned out to be a solid and complete win. In a change from past mayoral elections, Roberts was able to make inroads and win the heavily-campaigned 4th Ward by 131 votes. The 3rd and 4th Wards are home to the greatest proportion of Hoboken’s lifelong residents, public school parents, minorities and city employees. These two wards were Russo strengths in the past two elections, but Roberts’ supporters have gotten involved in issues related to those wards, which had been neglected by politicians in the past.
Roberts’ win capped a 16-year journey to the top of the Hoboken political mountain. The product of the city’s affluent and river-touching 6th Ward made a name for himself as a firefighter and successful businessman in the 1980s. His early political career was marked by being a consensus maker, often giving long speeches at council meetings in favor of the mayor’s initiatives. But since his highly publicized break from the Russo a little over two and a half years ago, Roberts has been one of Russo’s most audible critics.
Celebration
Victory was sweet for Roberts’ Hoboken United Team, who tapped into anger against the incumbent in order to win. As the results were ushered into Roberts’ Headquarters on election night, they were greeted with inquisitive glances followed by small bursts of cheering and uproars. The results were then taken to a back room to be tallied by Roberts’ campaign workers. Every couple of minutes, the door would crack open, and a voice from within would whisper the results to former mayor Steve Cappiello, who would then whisper it to other Roberts’ supporters until the entire room was quickly abuzz with controlled elation.
By 8:45 p.m., a great cheer came from the over 500 supporters in attendance as the crowd carried the newly elected at-large councilman elect Ruben Ramos Jr. into the campaign headquarters on the shoulders of supporters.
Soon to follow Ramos was the rest of the Hoboken United ticket of Soares and Marsh. After several minutes of hugs and high fives, Dave Roberts entered the scene and stepped up to a podium on the doorstep of his Washington Street headquarters.
From there, he gave an impassioned speech thanking the people who voted for him and the other politicos who supported his bid for mayor.
“We want to declare tonight that arrogance and corruption is not an accepted practice in City Hall,” said Roberts. “We are going to put the citizens of the city of Hoboken first and not the political elite.” From his podium he also pledged to help alleviate congestion problems, to make finding parking spaces easier, and to improve the Hoboken Housing Authority. After he made his promises, he thanked the local, state, and federal politicos that supported his bid for mayor. He gave special thanks to State Senator Bernard Kenny (D-Hoboken), 13th District Rep. Robert Menendez (D-Union City), and Hudson County Freeholder Maurice Fitzgibbons. In addition, he recognized some of the other area elected and past elected officials who showed up to give Roberts their support. He mentioned Union City Mayor Brian Stack and Weehawken Mayor Richard Turner, whom he pledged that he would work with neighboring municipalities to help correct common problems.
After Roberts’ acceptance speech, he turned the microphone over to Ramos, who had to wait several minutes to give his speech due to the large number of 4th Ward supporters who vocally voiced their approval of Ramos’ win.
“How sweet this is,” said Ramos over the crowd. “The last two and a half years were a dog fight every single day. Now we’re going to work even harder to fix the problems in the Housing Authority and deliver what we have promised.”
After Ramos gave a five-minute speech, Carol Marsh was ushered to the podium and gave an elated and visibly shaken thank-you. In a short statement with arms held high, she said, “How many voters does it take to say that the hearts and the minds of the people of Hoboken have spoken.”
Last to take the podium was the reelected Soares. He repeated his running mates’ sentiments that they are going to clean up what they deemed to be a mismanaged City Hall and deliver on their campaign promises.
Third party candidates
While mayoral hopeful Dan Tumpson was disappointed in only receiving 532 votes, he was optimistic and was pleased as possible with the election’s outcome.
“Obviously we hoped to get more votes than what I got and I thought it’d be a closer race, but I am very glad that Russo did not win,” said Tumpson Wednesday afternoon. “I think my campaign was successful in bringing over development issues to the forefront and helped catalyze the transformation of a tight election into an amazingly lopsided victory for Roberts.”
Tumpson’s slate of council candidates did not fair much better that he did. Helen Hirsch led with 796 followed by Cheryl Fallick with 553 and Alice Misiewicz with 528.
Hoboken schoolteacher Terry LaBruno, who has always been active in the community, had a strong showing as a council independent with 1,541 votes.
She was followed by retired police officer Sal DeMeo with 386 votes and school board member Carrie Gilliard with 383.
The transition period
The biggest adjustment Roberts will have to make as a result of Tuesday’s election is not the move from councilman to mayor, but is from perpetual challenger to final decision maker.
For the last two and a half years, Roberts and his supporters have made political careers of criticizing the administration. Now they have become the administration, with no one to stand in their way. They will have to produce results, and at the same time handle criticism cordially, as they have said Russo could not.
Roberts’ transition period promises to have some bumps along the way, but he does have several things going for him.
First, it is likely that Roberts will gain control of the City Council. In addition to the three councilpersons that were elected Tuesday, Roberts will also be able to chose his successor as 6th Ward council member as well as Ruben Ramos’ replacement in the 4th Ward. The council must ratify the appointments. The two new council members will serve until November, when there will be special elections to fill the seats until June 2003.
While a Roberts source said that names have already been tossed about for the two open council positions, they declined to make public those choices.
Roberts may still receive opposition from Russo stalwarts 1st Ward council member Teresa Castellano and 2nd Ward councilman Richard DelBoccio. 5th Ward Councilman Michael Cricco is harder to predict, as he has shown independence in the past. And in somewhat of a surprising development, Roberts has appeared to lure 3rd Ward council member Rosanne Andreula to his side. Andreula was elected twice with Russo’s support, but recently has cast some votes with the Roberts faction of the council. She was present at Roberts’ victory celebration Tuesday.
Another thing that Roberts has going for him is that he has a much better relationship than Russo did with state and federal elected officials in the area. Sen. Kenny and Rep. Menendez often butted heads with Russo.
“We’ve always worked for the citizens of the city of Hoboken,” said Kenny last week. “But sometimes in the past, it’s been difficult to work with the outgoing administration. Now we have a chance to have a much more proactive relationship with the mayor’s office which can only help the people.”
But the transition might be difficult at City Hall. Roberts has already declared that City Business Administrator George Crimmins and mayoral aide and Hispanic affairs director Robert Crespo (whose salary more than doubled over eight years) will not be returning in the new administration. Roberts said that he does not have people in mind for the positions yet, but promises to conduct an extensive search to fill those positions.
Also up for grabs and up for review under the new administration will be Human Services Director Robert Drasheff and Environmental Services Director Tim Calligy, as well as the city’s attorney, the Little Silver Firm of Murray, Murray, and Corrigan.
Another road block that may hinder a seamless transition is the fact that Mayor Russo had a great deal of influence upon most facets of municipal government. The president and vice-president of the Board of Education were recently reelected under Russo’s ticket and board President David Anthony was Russo’s campaign manager.
Likewise, on the Hoboken Parking Authority board are Russo’s wife Michele Russo and several other Russo supporters. One of Roberts’ campaign promises is to overhaul what he deems to be an inefficient Parking Authority. Roberts also is hoping to reform the Hoboken Housing Authority, although this, like the HPA, is an autonomous agency to which the mayor can name some members.
For Roberts’s transition to be successful, he is going to have to be active and deliver on some of his campaign promises and do it quickly. Campaign ideas included building perimeter parking garages, a fully-time cross town trolley and his much-hyped capacity study. He is going to have to find funds for these projects while at the same time maintaining his promise of maintaining or reducing taxes in what he has called an “obscene” budget. Despite repeated attempts by the press to elicit at least one budget-cutting suggestion from Roberts, he was able to keep mum on ideas during the campaign; now he’s going to have to find cuts, even if they’re unpopular with some segments of the city.
How the war was won
A successful election victory comes from more than just having the best platform; it also includes running the best campaign. Tuesday’s election in which David Roberts beat incumbent Anthony Russo was no exception.
Roberts and his organization proved especially adept at galvanizing the public on several catch-phrase issues such as “overdevelopment” (a word that was ne’er spoken in the city until a 1999 community meeting) and perimeter parking.
Roberts’ comfortable victory came, in part, from the following:
Large and effective street presence
A major factor in Roberts’ victory was his strong street presence on Election Day. Roberts Campaign Manager Michael Lenz could not give a specific number of paid and unpaid supporters that were on the out in force on Tuesday, but he estimated that the total number was somewhere around 500.
Roberts got a massive infusion of street workers from 4th Ward Councilman Ruben Ramos Jr., and by paying 500 to 600 mostly unemployed and college students $45 apiece to stand on the corner all day. While Russo did spend more money on the campaign, his presence in the streets was nowhere near the number of white- and red-shirted Roberts supporters that were active in the distribution of fliers around the city.
Penetration into Russo’s strongholds
Ruben Ramos came up huge for Roberts in the 4th Ward in this election. In the past two elections, Russo was untouchable in the “Old Hoboken” and Hoboken Housing Authority neighborhoods in the 3rd and 4th wards.
Roberts spent a lot of time and money campaigning in that neighborhood and built a major part of his platform around the Housing Authority, even though affordable housing is not a major issue in his home ward, the 6th Ward.
Ramos drew his following and the fact that he decided to run in this election gave Roberts a huge boost in an area of town where he might have had trouble pulling votes otherwise.
State Democrats vs. local Democrats
Robert’s ticket of Hoboken United took full advantage of their ties with state and county officials. While the Russo campaign was largely funded by the Hoboken Democratic Organization, a local committee controlled by his wife Michele, Roberts drew a great deal of funding support from state-level Democrats.
The most vocal campaigners for Roberts where Hudson County Freeholder Maurice Fitzgibbons, State Sen. Bernard Kenny (D- Hoboken) and Rep. Robert Menendez. Kenny and Fitzgibbons had supported Russo for years.
Russo-critic bonding
Roberts’ campaign brought together basically everyone who ever had been at odds with Russo, whereas in the past, some of the anti-Russo factions had also been at odds with each other. Under Roberts, who had been able to work equally well with both old-timers and newcomers in town, these politicos were able to put their egos, strong personalities, and past differences aside and work together.
Last-minute gaffes and apathy from Russo
Three months before this election, one would be hard pressed to find someone who would have thought that Roberts would be able to defeat Russo by 1,305 votes. But there were several mistakes by a lackluster Russo campaign.
First of all, Russo attempted to jumpstart a controversial traffic diversion plan. The plan was made without input from the public or from the mayors of neighboring towns. It took many residents by surprise and played into Roberts’ hands by seeming to be an admission that there was a traffic crisis in Hoboken. Roberts scored big points by arguing the city is overdeveloped and that Russo’s diversion plan was only an admission that there were too many cars in the city. Also, the county prosecutor said Russo’s plan was unconstitutional.
Another gaffe occurred the week before the election when the Russo campaign mailed out a seemingly-benign post card, but apparently the post cards were printed with students’ school ID and homeroom numbers on them. This upset many parents and drew questions to Russo about his using other city agencies for his own political gain.
But more than anything, Russo appeared tired throughout this whole campaign. He has always been known for his hard charging style, but was surprisingly subdued and resigned this entire election. Supporters were not as visible at town meetings as in past years and wrote fewer letters to the newspapers.
Russo’s campaign went negative, trying to link Roberts with the gentrification fires of the previous administrations, but sometimes failed in campaign literature to cite sources of information or to say what Roberts’ position had been in those previous administrations.
After the election, Russo was quoted as saying that he’d been ambivalent about his choice to run for a third term and that his heart was never really in the race. Russo had just finished two contentious terms and had been in constant battle with a much bigger foe: cancer.
Our Digital Archive from 2000 – 2016
