Sandra Bolden Cunningham and Louis Manzo are competing against each other for a four-year term of State Senate in the 31st District in the June 5 Democratic primary. In the 31st District (covering all of Bayonne and much of Jersey City except for the Heights section), Cunningham, widow of late Jersey City Mayor and State Sen. Glenn Cunningham, is running for state Senate on a slate endorsed by the Hudson County Democratic Organization (HCDO). This is Cunningham’s first run for a political office. State Assemblyman Manzo is looking to make the jump to make the leap from Assembly to state Senate. He is running on the ticket backed by the Democrats for Hudson County, a new political group formed by Union City Mayor and State Assemblyman Brian Stack (D-33rd Dist.), who is competing for a state Senate seat in his district.
Along with the State Senate seat, there are also State Assembly seats up for grabs. Running for 31st District Assembly on the Cunningham slate are former Jersey City City Council President L. Harvey Smith and Bayonne City Councilman Anthony Chiappone. Running for Assembly on the Manzo slate is Nicholas Chiaravalloti, a Bayonne resident who serves on the staff of U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, and Jersey City resident Sheila Newton-Moses, head of the Sunnyside Academy, a chain of preschools in Jersey City.
Glenn is always with her
Running for her first political office, Sandra Bolden Cunningham goes on the campaign trail depending on the guidance of various advisors and close friends such as Bobby Jackson and Dominic Santana.
But there’s one person whom she always looks for in spirit – her late husband, Glenn Cunningham, the former Jersey City Mayor who also held the same State Senate post she hopes to hold after the November 6 general election.
“Campaigning is difficult in general but it is even more difficult as I am accustomed to turning around and talking to him, or turning and seeing him talk to a resident.” Cunningham said.
Cunningham grew up in Newark, the daughter of a minister. A graduate of Bloomfield College, she also attended the New York Academy of Theater Arts and received a Fundraising Certificate from New York University.
Mrs. Cunningham is the former executive director of the Hudson County Bar Association in Jersey City, where she was responsible for recruitment of new members, the fiscal growth of the association and expansion of activities.
She also taught at Montclair State College and was a Community and Public Relations Coordinator for the Essex-Newark Legal Services.
Currently, she is the executive director of the Glenn D. & Sandra Cunningham Foundation located in Jersey City, which was founded in her late husband’s memory to help high school students to attend college by providing them with scholarships and funds for books, and a mentor to help guide them through their college education.
Cunningham, if elected, plans to continue in the footsteps of her late husband by pursuing some of the initiatives that he had embarked upon before his untimely death three years ago this past week – housing, taxes, etc. And also develop the kind of relationships with fellow legislators that her late husband did to help his 31st District constituents.
“I plan to start working with senators from other urban areas and hopefully I believe we need an urban plan,” Cunningham said. “We need to start working together collectively putting together an urban plan so that we can get money and divide it up amongst ourselves.”
Cunningham continued, “We cannot look at urban areas as individual but as a block.” She said she will also look into helping young men recently released from prison to find jobs that Cunningham did with his Second Chance program in Jersey City.
Cunningham said the issue of jobs, especially amongst predominantly lower middle class and poor residents of the 31st District, resonates with her as she is reminded of the people who stop by her campaign office on the corner of Stevens Avenue and Martin Luther King Drive.
“I get at least 15 to 20 people a day if not more come by and ask for a job or need help finding one,” Cunningham said.
Cunningham also would work to organize a “Senior Citizens convention” to gauge the needs of senior citizens living in the district and hopes to follow up with other conventions for various constituent groups to find out their concerns.
When asked about her lack of political experience, Cunningham said she got the training she needed to make a run for the State Senate seat from her late husband’s campaigns for Mayor in 2001 and State Senate in 2003.
“Campaigning is very difficult in some ways but in other ways it is good in that you are out there meeting with the people,” Cunningham said. “But I don’t it as any different as when Glenn was running.”
She did cite as a challenge to her campaign the team of “McCann-Manzo” – her opponent State Assemblyman Louis Manzo and his longtime friend and advisor Gerald McCann with their political maneuvers during this election such as challenging her petitions in court.
Another potential setback for her campaign is the recent revelation that a volunteer for the Cunningham team, Russell Wallace, was a convicted sex offender. However, Wallace, an employee with the Jersey City Incinerator Authority had stepped down from his volunteer post last week. Calls to Cunningham for comment on Wallace were not returned before this article went to press.
The challenger
Louis Manzo is running for state Senate in the 31st District on his record as an Assemblyman.
He is facing off in the June 5 Democratic Primary against Sandra Cunningham. Four years ago, Manzo ran with Sandra Cunningham’s husband, then-Jersey City Mayor Glenn Cunningham, in what is considered one of the great political upsets in Hudson County history as outsiders defeating the Hudson County Democratic Organization. Manzo, who was briefly accepted by the HCDO in 2005, once more finds himself as the outsider. Ironically, Sandra Cunningham is now the HCDO candidate of choice.
Manzo, who previously served as Hudson County Freeholder in the early 1990s, said he has not shifted his position.
“The HDCO accepted me two years ago because they didn’t have anybody they could run against me,” he said.
Manzo has been critical of Sandra Cunningham for her refusal to debate him, although he is armed with significant knowledge of issues and an impressive legislative record that puts any challenger at a disadvantage.
Some of the most significant issues of his legislative career are how to lower property taxes, fund schools, fight crime and rescue local hospitals.
Since taking office in January, 2004, Manzo had proposed legislation that would deal with these issues as well as issues concerning the environment.
Perhaps the most well-known of Manzo’s proposals is something called “the smart bill,” which would shift the burden of funding public schools from property taxes to the income taxes of the state’s most wealthy residents.
Although the bill has yet to become law, Manzo said it has pushed lawmakers into making reforms in property taxes, including the upcoming 20 percent reduction due to take effect next year.
“The Smart Bill become law eventually,” he predicted.
The change would more fairly fund the schools throughout the state meeting the stringent guidelines set by several state Supreme Court rulings, Manzo said.
Last year, Manzo sponsored and cosponsored a package of legislation to fight crime. While some pieces of the crime package ran into legal road and legislative roadblocks, some key provisions have moved on. One of the most significant, Manzo said, is the provision for expunging criminal records of people convicted of non-violent crimes.
“The best way to fight crime and to keep a person from going back to jail is to find that person a job,” he said.
But because criminal records often keep people from qualifying for jobs, Manzo authored legislation that would require probation and parole boards to automatically begin expunging proceedings so that people can find jobs.
Healthcare insurance reform
Perhaps one of the most controversial pieces of legislation Manzo proposed deals with healthcare reform in the state.
Manzo is proposing establishing an insurance board similar to the Board of Public Utilities. This board would regulate costs of procedures, reimbursements to hospitals and even require insurance companies to use investment profits to help lower the premium costs to people with good healthcare records.
The board would oversee claim disputes and the law would create incentives for doctors in private practice to take on a portion of the state’s charity care.
Manzo’s legislation would provide lower malpractice insurance premiums for doctors who take on charity care. He said this would likely have the most benefit to younger doctors starting practices who are faced with the heavy cost of insurance.
By allowing private doctors to take on charity care, hospitals would have less of a burden.
The port area will create jobs Creating jobs for the area is another concern Manzo is seeking through various legislation that would promote warehousing connected to the port operations as well as recently cleaned up contaminated manufacturing sites. His legislation signed into law recently allows for warehousing to be located closer to port terminals in Newark and Elizabeth, rather than planned areas in southern New Jersey. This not only creates job opportunities and remediate former industrial sites, but also reduces truck emissions that would have resulted from transporting goods back to the New York Metropolitan area from the remote warehouses.
Manzo is in favor of converting a section of the port facilities near Global Terminal into additional port facilities for container freight. This facility — an area north of the former Military Ocean Terminal – is currently being used for unloading car freight.
The McCann and Stack factor
Manzo has been criticized by his opponents for having former Jersey City Mayor Gerald McCann as a campaign advisor.
But Manzo pointed out that McCann has worked with many of the same people attacking him, including Glenn Cunningham, Sandra Cunningham’s aids, and current Jersey City Mayor Gerry Healy.
McCann, who is a savvy political analyst, has become a kind of lightening rod because of his controversial political tactics.
Manzo also responded to questions about his financial deals with Union City Mayor Brian Stack.
Manzo is part of the Democrats for Hudson County, on which Stack is running in the 33 rd District. DHC is running county slates against the HCDO.
Manzo, who is a broker for insurance, also provides healthcare coverage to Union City.
“I’m a businessman,” he said. “I did business there before this, and this is a competitive bid contract.”
Ricardo Kaulessar can be reached at rkaulessar@hudsonreporter.com. Al Sullivan can be reached at asullivan@hudsonreporter.com