Brian Stack had a lot of questions to answer last week.
The 33rd District assemblyman and Union City mayor was asked to explain two questionable campaign contributions he took, including one from a bar owner who was recently accused of employing smuggled illegal aliens.
However, Stack said he didn’t know about the contribution, and has since donated the money to charity. Stack is entering the campaign season, and with an election for his Assembly seat coming in November, he was subject to a press conference held by his Republican opponent on Tuesday.
“With the recent incidents, it is clear that Brian Stack is a good man trying doing too many things,” said Richard Valdes, Republican candidate for Assembly, Tuesday.
Valdes was referring to the fact that Stack is both mayor and assemblyman at once. (West New York Mayor Albio Sires shares a similar distinction, as he is the district’s other assemblyman.)
The 33rd Assembly District includes West New York, Union City, Hoboken, Weehawken, and part of Jersey City.
Just last week, local publications pointed out that Stack had taken $3,500 in campaign contributions from Luisa Medrano, operator of El Paisano Bar and Puerto de La Union II, who has been indicted on 31 counts of federal charges ranging from conspiracy to commit forced labor to alien smuggling.
According to State Election Enforcement Commission records, one of the contributions to Stack was in the amount of $2,000 on April 16, 2001, and the second donation was made in the amount of $1,500 on March 31, 2003.
Stack has, in the past, been tough on bars and has said he doesn’t take contributions from Union City bar owners and establishments.
So what happened?
“She used her name and address in Fairview,” explained Stack in an interview last week. “We make it practice of not accepting donations from bar owners or establishments, and we do not accept cash.”
Stack pointed out that Medrano’s establishments were not mentioned on the form.
Throughout his administration, Stack has constantly reiterated his stance on the quality of life, especially in regard to the local liquor establishments, and has shown a stern focus on disciplining establishments for breaches of the Alcohol Beverage Control laws.
“Anyone who knows my record knows how strong I have been on [the bar establishments],” said Stack. “My biggest opposition has come from the bar owners.”
According to Stack, when he first entered office, there were dozens of pending cases to go before the ABC Board. Now approximately 50 hearings a year are heard before the ABC Board, with a backlog of only about three cases pending.
Conflict with contributions
However, some residents and Stack’s political opponents have found it difficult to believe that he was not aware of Medrano’s contribution.
“I challenge Assemblyman and Mayor Brian Stack to disclose the nature of his relationship and questionable campaign contributions from Luisa Medrano, the alleged ring leader of the sex-slave trade recently uncovered by U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie,” said Valdes.
Stack claimed he never met Medrano until a fundraiser held last year. He said that in that case, she was stopped at the door and was turned away from contributing to the event.
“I happened to be at the door, and she came with a check in her hand for a large sum of money,” said Stack. “I asked her to leave the fundraiser and gave her back her check.”
Many of Stack’s contributions have come through fund-raising events and through private donations to his political organizations, such as Union City First.
“Unfortunately, you always run the risk of selling to someone who you wouldn’t want,” said Stack. “I am upset more than anything that she was able to do this, and I’m upset with myself, but we did the right thing with the money.”
Stack and his committee have since donated the accumulated $3,500 to the Battered Women’s Shelter of Hudson County.
“We do a lot of charity work with the [campaign] money as well,” said Stack, referring to city events like the summer block parties held for the community.
However, with the recent turn of events, Stack said he and his committee are instituting tougher regulations regarding campaign contributions.
Other debatable funds
In last Sunday’s Star Ledger, it was reported that Stack had received a $5,000 political contribution from a Union City garbage truck driver, who had purchased a vacant lot at 1501 Palisade Ave. for $1 from his brother, only to sell it to the New Jersey School Construction Corporation for $1.48 million.
A Montclair dentist already owned the lot in March, 2003 when the Union City Board of Education began considering it to be part of a new school site. Shortly afterward, the dentist sold the land to his brother, David Lopez, the truck driver.
Lopez planned to build new condominiums there and got zoning approval. He began advertising the condos. In March of 2005, the state SCC paid Lopez $1.48 million to acquire the land. A month later, David Lopez made a $5,000 campaign contribution to Union City First, Stack’s campaign committee.
Stack also claimed he was unaware of that donation until recently.
“That money has now been donated to the PERC Homeless Shelter,” said Stack.
Stack also said that had local boards known that the state was going to buy that land, perhaps they or the state could have stopped the construction of the condominiums.
“I was appalled that the state of New Jersey had allowed the building to get built, and then have it [demolished] when the school site had been set,” said Stack.
As a result, Stack is trying to introduce legislation in the Assembly that should the SCC be deciding on a site for possible school construction, property owners will not be allowed to begin construction of a proposed condominium or the like for three to six months prior to a decision being made.
The paper named two local officials as having been involved, as private businesspeople, in advertising the potential condominiums for sale: Alicia Morejon, a member of the Union City Board of Education, and Union City Commissioner of Public Works Luis Martin, who was the listing agent for the sale of the property.
Outcry from opponents
Valdez, in his press conference Tuesday, also asked Stack to disclose his relationship with David Lopez. According to Valdes, it’s obvious that ever since Mayor Stack took on a third position as an assemblyman of the 33rd District, he has been unable to properly fulfill his duties to Union City as director of public safety. Valdes counted the assemblyman job as a third position because any mayor of Union City also serves as a commissioner on the five-member Board of Commissioners, as per the city’s form of government. Each commissioner gets an area to focus on, and Stack’s is public safety. So Valdes was including the mayoral post, the commissioner of public safety, and assemblyman as three positions.
“As a Union City home owner, I am very troubled by these occurrences; there is a deadly outbreak of sexual assault and violent crime spreading across Union City,” said Valdes. He made reference to the recent rape and murder of a 51-year-old woman just steps from her Union City front porch, which was the fourth recent sexual assault in the area. Valdes also mentioned an Emerson High School student who was stabbed in daylight last year just a few feet from the school.
“I am alarmed as the father of a 4-year-old girl and as a husband,” said Valdes. “I am troubled by the poor decisions that Mayor Stack has made in receiving political contributions.”
Political?
Stack called this a reckless attempt by Valdes to try to use this as a negative situation only to further his own political agenda.
“This is expected of a candidate who has no platform to run on, and doesn’t know the issues,” said Stack. Since Stack has taken office and maintained a focus on liquor establishments, there have been no new liquor licenses issued, only transfers or definite suspension of a license, and curfew for the area bars has moved from 3 to 2 a.m. The two bars in question have had multiple suspensions for violations of the ABC laws.
Medrano, who has since been released on bail, and other individuals named in the indictment are awaiting trial for allegedly harboring illegal Honduran immigrant girls, some as young as 14, who allegedly were forced to work at Medrano’s bars under threats in order to pay off their smuggling fees.