Dear Editor:
Thanks to dear Peter Cammarano, Hoboken now finds itself in the middle of another election season only a few weeks after the last one finished. It seemed that no sooner had the tawdry, toxic political hit commercials left the airwaves before they were back again. I am not impressed with political campaigns that spend more than the mayor’s salary to produce commercials that are as slick and sleazy as the state and national politicians. It is not a good message. I have lately had the misfortune of being repeatedly subjected to a TV commercial from Beth Mason designed to portray Dawn Zimmer as some sort of sinister character because she’s still holding her council seat as she fills in as mayor pro tem. It doesn’t matter that the charge is utterly meaningless, it’s the way the commercial shows sleazy pictures that portray Zimmer as some sort of gangster or vampire. The commercial cynically exploits the sad fact that grisly images will trump verbal content any time.
Mason is nakedly attempting to manipulate the public with disingenuous commercials like that. I hope I’m not the only Hobokenite who feels my intelligence is being insulted by such ugly negative campaigning. Having just gone through a season of this kind of gaudy deception, I beg the political horde that is rushing toward the mayor’s seat to exercise some restraint in whipping us with another season of this kind of sleazy political fighting.
I’m sad to say that I was a supporter of the illustrious Mr. Cammarano. When I saw the debate between Cammarano and Zimmer, I was impressed by her, but I was more impressed with him. She seemed to have good intentions, but he had concrete plans based on an intimate knowledge of how city government works. I said, at the time, “He knows where the bodies are buried.” Unfortunately my metaphor was much more apt than I knew at the time. I respect Dawn Zimmer for picking up the reins after the city government collapsed as a result of Cammarano’s poor judgment. She has a dual qualification to hold the job: one by the rules of succession, and secondly by the fact that she came within a few votes of winning in the runoff against Cammarano. I welcome anyone who wants to oppose her in the election the townspeople must undergo at no fault of our own. But I urge the politicians to exercise some civility and give us a break from some of the most transparently manipulative political smear techniques. People tire of the negative campaigning after a season of it. I don’t think you’ll get the desired result if you hammer us with another two months of ugly negativity.
David Cogswell