Of four candidates running in the June 5 Democratic primary to fill two seats in the state Assembly for the 31st District, two are from Jersey City: Former Jersey City City Councilman L. Harvey Smith and Daycare Center Proprietor Sheila Newton-Moses. They are running on opposing tickets.
Residents can vote for any two of the four candidates in the Democratic primary. Four are running, and the two who happen to live in Bayonne were profiled last week (see www.hudsonreporter.com).
The two open Assembly seats will go to the two highest vote-getters on that day, rather than going to a ticket.
The 31st District includes all of Bayonne and a large portion of southern Jersey City. Two-thirds of the district, in fact, is in Jersey City, giving the advantage to any candidate who can draw voters there.
Recently, a rival Democratic organization called the Democrats for Hudson County (DFHC) formed in order to take on the longtime Hudson County Democratic Organization (HCDO) for those seats.
Newton-Moses is running on the DFHC ticket for Assembly.
Smith is running with the HCDO candidates.
Who supports them
In the 31st District, the DFHC ticket also includes Assemblyman Louis Manzo (D-31st Dist.) who is running for state Senate, and Nicholas Chiaravalloti, who also is seeking an Assembly seat. Chiaravalloti was one of those profiled last week.
The HCDO ticket also includes Sandra Cunningham, who is seeking the state Senate seat, and Bayonne Councilman Anthony Chiappone, who is seeking the other Assembly seat. Chiappone was also profiled last week.
Until 2006, there always happened to be at least one Bayonne person and at least one Jersey City person in these seats.
‘You can achieve anything’
L. Harvey Smith comes to the primary election having worn a lot of governmental hats over his career. A former teacher and currently an undersheriff for Hudson County, Smith served 12 years on the Jersey City council, where he served in his last term as council president. After the untimely death of then state Sen. and Mayor Glenn Cunningham in 2004, Smith served as acting mayor, and then interim state Senator.
Interviewed at his Montgomery Street headquarters, Smith was surrounded by voter lists and ringing telephones. The office is within a few blocks of the Greenville neighborhood where he was raised, and where he has spent most of his life. Well-known on the City Council as the driving force behind public works projects in the largely African-American Ward F, Smith laid out his election agenda in very specific terms.
“I have some state level experience, and I’m not controlled by anyone,” he said.
He said saving local hospitals and improving health care are key concerns for the 31st Legislative District that includes all of Bayonne and the southern portion of Jersey City.
“We have to look into funding health care,” he said. “I believe in universal healthcare. This was something that was proposed in 1993 by President [Bill] Clinton. I do not believe politics should be involved in this. It is too serious a matter.”
He said hospitals are a major part of health care, and that if the hospitals shut down, people – especially the most vulnerable – will have no place to go.
“Illness recognizes no gender, race, or religion,” he said. “Some people can afford to pay for their health care. If is not fair to close a pediatric unit – women will continue to have babies, and we cannot afford to close down acute care units. This must be a concern of Democrats as well as Republicans. This is about people not politics.”
He said some other important issues in the district include rising crime in Jersey City, and rising taxes in both Jersey City and Bayonne.
Crime often rises when there is a lack of job opportunities, he said, and pointed to failings of the government to provide adequate training. He said welfare-to-work programs were never properly implemented. He said job creation, drug rehabilitation, and retraining are all essential elements in solving crime.
While new technology seems to be the foundation of new job growth, he also said that the government must be sensitive to the needs of the people, pointing out that blue collar working class jobs helped make Hudson County and American strong.
“These jobs can continue to be the strength of our nation, but union protections are eroding and the cost of living is rising,” he said. “This makes middle class people feel like they are more lower class. We need to realize that to solve crime, we need more jobs, not bigger jails.”
Welfare and public housing projects were always meant to be temporary solutions until people could move up the economic ladder as people gain more skills and get better educations. He said he believed in regionalizing minimum wage so that people in areas like the New York region with higher cost of living would be paid more.
“Seven dollars an hour may be fine in other parts of the country, but with housing costs here, and the higher cost of living, people can barely survive,” he said.
Street gangs, Smith noted, are not a new phenomena, and he said in some sense they are attractive to kids who are seeking security, an enclave and some sense of self esteem. But they are havens for illegal drugs, which is as big an industry in America as many legal industries such as the growing of corn or wheat.
Efforts to combat illegal drugs have taken many roads, such as curing the physical, social even spiritual problems, but not the economic situation. In this regard, education plays a large role in helping people, but schools and teachers can’t be the only resource.
“I believe that if you work hard, study and live by the rules, you can achieve anything,” Smith said. “But you can’t have people changing the rules in secret. Things need to be fair for everyone.”
Smith grimly admits that he has been misunderstood in the past.
“I think I’m one of the most misunderstood political figures in Hudson County,” he said. “People who know me have a different idea. But some people mistake my honesty for arrogance. Yet if they don’t want to hear the truth, why are they asking the questions?”
‘I believe I am a good candidate’ Sheila Newton-Moses, who said she was in her thirties, was born and raised on the island of Antigua. She came with her parents to the U.S. as a teenager, settling in Jersey City.
She finished her schooling at Lincoln High School in Jersey City. She then went on to St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with a minor in Secondary Education.
Newton-Moses has continued to follow the education track in her life, earning her degree from Columbia University’s Teachers College and currently is pursuing a Doctorate of Education through Walden University in Baltimore, Md.
Newton-Moses has also embraced the business side and has recently completed the Mini MBA program at Rutgers University in Piscataway.
Both education – her first love – and business has helped her to succeed as the president and CEO of the Sunnyside Academy, a chain of daycare centers located in Jersey City. She also brings nearly 10 years of experience as an academic coordinator at the Urban League of Hudson County and at Hudson County Community College. She also worked with the Jersey City Public Schools in developing preschools.
Newton-Moses said her experiences are beneficial to her running for office.
“I believe I am a good candidate based on the experiences I have,” Newton-Moses said.
Newton-Moses said one of her first tasks if elected is to work for the children of her district.
“Early childcare is important to me,” Newton-Moses said. “I am going to work toward providing children with opportunities by getting more state funding for after school programs.
Newton-Moses also said she would like to look at building new schools specifically in Downtown Jersey City, where she sees many new families moving into the area. And she wants to work toward libraries devoted exclusively to children in Jersey City and Bayonne.
Another goal is jobs for unemployed Jersey City and Bayonne residents, particularly those young men who have just served in jail.
“I am looking to expand job opportunities for those young men who paid their debt to society,” Newton-Moses said. “I am hoping to work on an expungement bill for young men so that they can be pardoned and go back into society.”
Expungement is a process by which those who have been previously imprisoned for minor crimes can have their records erased, so they would not be used against them getting any future employment.
Also, she plans, if elected to the Assembly, to seek funding to get more affordable housing built in Jersey City and Bayonne. She points to development of luxury housing in both towns from Downtown Jersey City to the Military Ocean Terminal in Bayonne.
“More affordable housing and more subsidized housing is what I will be fighting for,” Newton-Moses said. “There’s a lot of housing being built that is not keeping up with the job growth and there is a lot of pressure on the typical homeowner to keep up with the expense of owning a house.”
On the issue of housing, Newton-Moses also plans to tackle property taxes, with Bayonne paying the second highest property taxes in Hudson County next to Kearny.
“It’s plaguing too many residents and I need to look at that to be able to help people stay in their communities,” Newton-Moses said.
One controversial issue that Newton-Moses hopes to deal with is the intimidation that government employees face from their bosses when it comes to their political affiliations. That is an especially touchy issue in Hudson County.
“I will be taking a very hard stance on ensuring people should feel they can vote for whomever they want without being subject to harassment,” Newton-Moses said. “We can’t have a hostile environment; we must have order and civility. It feels like we are living in a Communist country. That is anti-American.”