While the issue hardly rises to the level of a mystery by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, it may take a Sherlock Holmes to figure out just who leaked the misinformation to the press about so-called absentee ballots supposedly hoarded by the campaign for Hoboken council candidate Tim Occhipinti.
The issue has taken on a life of its own. Behind-the-scenes campaign bloggers on both sides have used the mistake to help bolster their candidates’ chances for election in the November special election for the 4th ward council seat. Occhipinti is one of two candidates trying to unseat incumbent Councilman Michael Lenz.
A political website reported that Occhipinti had taken a significant lead in absentee ballots, citing a source high in the Occhipinti camp.
“None of us let out any of that information,” said former Freeholder Maurice Fitzgibbons. “I spoke with Joe Del Priore and Mike Novak – the only other two people high up in this campaign, and they didn’t give out that information either.”
The fact is there are no absentee ballots yet. Apparently the report which the Occhipinti camp blames on the Lenz camp is based on applications for absentee ballots, not the ballots themselves.
This hasn’t stopped some of the more scurrilous Lenz-supporting bloggers from taking off with the misinformation, trying to paint Occhipinti as the next Peter Cammarano – who pleaded guilty to taking a bribe from Solomon Dwek in an FBI sting in 2009.
This has led several people in the Occhipinti camp to blame the Lenz camp for feeding the press with the misinformation.
“There is no Lenz camp other than me,” said Lenz this week. “And I don’t engage in dirty tricks like this.”
Lenz compared this to a similar campaign during the battle for Hoboken mayor in 2009 when the Cammarano campaign ran out of money and could not pay workers it had enticed to come from New York to work street operations. When the workers showed up at the Cammarano headquarters demanding pay, someone there told them that the flyer had been sent out from someone in the Dawn Zimmer campaign in order to create havoc.
Bloggers on every side of the political spectrum are a problem, often saddling the candidates they support with savage, homophobic and largely tasteless attacks on their opponents.
How to control these bloggers is becoming an increasing problem. With regard to the alleged absentee ballot gap between Occhipinti and Lenz, bloggers supporting Lenz jumped on the mistaken information with such fury that they made it look like the Lenz camp was the source, when it appears that other political operatives in Hoboken may have deliberately tried to provoke both sides into escalating their fight.
For Lenz, the whole process is frustrating.
“There is this assumption that in order to be a reformer you can’t be political, and non-functional,” Lenz said. “And that to be fair and objective, I should appoint someone to some position that disagrees with me on every issue, and that we should never appoint anyone that worked on our campaign. That’s insane. I want someone who agrees with my way of doing government. I just want to make sure they are qualified to do the job they get appointed to.”
Lenz says he is political.
“I try to present my issues in the best possible light, but I don’t conduct dirty tricks,” he said. “Good politics is good policy, and so I try to create good policy. If they weren’t good policies, I wouldn’t be supporting them.”
It is no secret that many of the people who supported Cammarano for mayor in 2009 are supporting Occhipinti.
But what this means depends on who you ask. Many in the reform movement in Hoboken claim that the powers behind Occhipinti are pining to “get back to business as usual,” and that Lenz, who is the deciding vote on the city council, is standing in their way.
Supporters of Occhipinti, however, say Occhipinti represents the same dissatisfaction with some so-called reform issues as Cammarano did.
“So what if some of the same people are behind Tim,” Fitzgibbons says. “Maybe they think Michael Lenz and Dawn Zimmer are taking the city in the wrong direction.”
Mariano Vega steps down
Many are in an uproar at the timing of Mariano Vega’s resignation from the Jersey City Council, one day after the deadline that would have allowed voters to choose his replacement in November. Instead, the council gets to name his replacement for the next year.
Had Vega submitted his letter last Friday, Sept. 10, rather than on Monday, Sept. 13, his seat would have been on November’s ballot. Now political wheelers and dealers get to make deals to get the replacement named for a term to expire with the November 2011 special election.
For over a year, Vega resisted resigning, even though he was among the Hudson County public officials accused of taking bribes from Dwek in a federal sting in 2009. Some believe a political deal was made in which Vega agreed to delay his plea to allow the council to control his successor in exchange for a promise that a job will still exist for him or one of his family members.
Fundraiser for sheriff candidate brings out political heavyweights.
Democratic candidate for Hudson County Sheriff Frank X. Schillari brought out the heavy political guns for his fundraiser at Liberty House in Jersey City last week. At the event were Bayonne Mayor and Hudson County Democratic Organization Chairman Mark Smith, Rep. Albio Sires, Hudson County Executive Tom DeGise, Harrison Mayor Ray McDonough, Guttenberg Mayor Gerald Drasheff, Assemblyman Rubin Ramos, Jersey City Councilman Bill Gaughan, former Union City Mayor Raul Garcia, Assemblyman Vincent Prieto, North Bergen Mayor and State Senator Nicholas Sacco, Assemblywoman Joan Quigley, newly named Assemblyman Jason O’Donnell and others.
With such heavyweights coming in on Schillari’s side, you wonder how incumbent Sheriff Juan Perez is doing?
“He’s doing just fine,” said Hudson County Republican Chairman Jose Arango, who brought the Latino sheriff under the Republican banner after Democrats abandoned him. “It isn’t lost in the Hispanic community that the Democrats are trying to replace the only county Hispanic official with someone who is not Hispanic.”
Just what Perez did to rile so many powerful Democrats remains the great unanswered question in this campaign.