Dear Editor:
The recent FBI sting has really put our fair city on the map. The publicity given to the arrest and resignation of the ill-starred mayor-elect Peter Cammarano has focused attention on the corruption that has disgraced Hudson County since the “good old days” of “Boss” Frank Hague, the bygone county executive who out-Tammanied New York’s Tammany Hall.
In the New York Times’ July 27 article on our home-grown fiasco, a former Hudson County congressman who pled guilty to tax evasion in his own corruption case asked, “What educated guy would want to be mayor of some town with 3,000 people?” adding, “all of a sudden, he is tempted – especially if he is a poor guy.” Well, Mr. Cammarano didn’t appear to be poor, but as a practicing lawyer he must have been educated. As we all learned, though, his education didn’t make him very smart – in addition to his alleged bone-headed, penny-ante graft, he succumbed to the demagoguery of the instigators of “Lowerhobokentaxes.com,” who prepared a public questionnaire for all candidates to declare their plans for reducing the city’s taxes.
The Reporter’s Aug. 2 edition features a front-page story headlined “The Unexpected Rise of Dawn Zimmer” that didn’t say much about her qualifications for becoming an effective civic leader. Her campaign web site had informed us that she rowed crew for four years for the University of New Hampshire where she graduated cum laude (in rowing?) and “is a runner who has run the New York City Marathon.” Apparently, her athletic prowess proved no more helpful than Cammarano’s schooling in helping her resist the blandishments of Hoboken’s noisy rabble-rousers, since she readily caved in to the questionnaire-wielding protesters.
With luck, Mr. Cammarano might stay out of jail. We’ll have to wait to see whether Zimmer learns enough about municipal government to restore respect for Hoboken and to become an effective political leader.
John Glasel