Opponents of 4th Ward Councilman Chris Campos in the November election for his seat have been complaining for months that Campos hasn’t lived in that part of town long enough to represent it. In order to run for a ward council position, a candidate must have lived there for a year.
The charge has traveled with Campos through this election.
Campos, 25, suddenly ascended to the 4th Ward seat in July after 4th Ward Councilman Ruben Ramos Jr. was elected to move to an at-large seat. The council nominated and voted on Campos to fill the empty seat until the next election this November. The only councilperson to vote against Campos was 1st Ward Councilwoman Theresa Castellano.
Campos’ opponents have since charged that while the councilman was away at college for the last seven years, he wasn’t living in the 4th Ward. They have noted, factually, that he had never voted in municipal elections or actively participated in local politics until this spring. Campos has responded that he did live in that ward and came home for holidays, and that his heart was always in Hoboken.
Away at school
After graduating from Hoboken High School in 1994, Campos paid his way through school at Denison University in Ohio and then went to American University Law School in Washington D.C. After graduating this past May with a law degree, he returned to Hoboken. Five months ago, he settled into a rented condo on Madison Street in the 4th Ward, where he currently lives.
But did he live in Hoboken for the year before that?
Campos has said that he grew up in the Hoboken Housing Authority projects with a relative, a fact that his opponents don’t deny. He said that while in school, he considered Hoboken his home, and came home on holidays to stay with relatives.
Campos was never on the lease in the Hoboken Housing Authority projects, despite the fact that HHA rules require all members of a household to be on the lease. But the rules were often ignored by tenants.
Hoboken Housing Authority Executive Director E. Troy Washington released a memo on July 11 that stated, "Mr. Campos is not and has never been a resident of an apartment per rules and regulations of the Hoboken Housing Authority."
Washington said he released it in response to questions from residents. Campos and Washington also had been at odds politically, as Campos does not believe Washington is doing a good job as executive director.
Campos did not contest, last week, that he was not on a lease in Hoboken. But he argued that even though he was at school, his home was always Hoboken.
"It was never like I was an exile like Napoleon at Alba, or anything like that," said Campos from the living room of the Madison Street condo Tuesday. "Everything that I am as a human being is here in Hoboken. I grew up and continue to be part of a village, and Hoboken is that village."
As Campos talked about growing up in Hoboken, he flipped through his scrapbook with pictures of him playing baseball in the projects, and photos of him with his grandmother in an apartment in the projects over Christmas during his college years. The trips were clearly made during his college years, as he looks older than in photos of graduation from Hoboken High School.
Campos also produced a letter to the editor that he wrote to the Reporter in 1999. "This weekend [1999] I returned home to visit my ailing grandmother in St. Mary Hospital, along with several other friends and relatives," the letter says. "Due to the rigors of law school, I unfortunately do not have the opportunity to return often enough to be familiar with the particularities of Hoboken politics …"
Campos said this letter is proof that Hoboken is his home.
Campos also added that for a 1999 trip to South Africa to meet his hero, Nelson Mandela, the Hoboken Puerto Rican committee and the Russo Civic Association donated money for the trip.
"If this wasn’t my home, then these Hoboken institutions would have never have helped me out financially so I could go that trip," the interim councilman said.
Campos also gave the Reporter a tour of where he grew up and where he would visit when he came to Hoboken for holidays and weekends.
"Every chance he got to come home from school, he did," said Margie Biart, his aunt, from an apartment inside the projects. "His friends and family live here. He lives here. The only reason he wasn’t on the lease was because his grandmother was ill and Chris was a poor college student. To put him on the lease would have been too much effort for either of them at the time, especially when he was only home for weekends and holidays."
After leaving Biart’s apartment, he walked to across the way to 540 Marshall, where Campos said that he spent most of his time growing up and where he would visit his grandmother when he was in Hoboken. His grandmother passed away in 1999.
Along the way, several people stopped Campos to say hello to him.
"He’s lived here his whole life," said HHA resident Ricky Walker. "I don’t know what they are talking about when they say he’s not from around here. It doesn’t make any sense. Everyone around here knows who he is."
As he walked through the projects, several car horns honked and people reached out to wave to Campos.
"Even when he was going to school," said friend and HHA resident Gale Johnson, "he was around all the time. He would eat at my mom’s house and would play with my sisters’ kids."
Campos could not provide any mail from past years that would prove that he did in fact maintain residency in the 4th Ward. Campos conceded that during college, he used his campus address as his mailing address.
Campos also said that he didn’t spend full summers in Hoboken, as he usually took classes during summer.
His opponents say that even if Campos grew up here, he hasn’t been here enough recently to effectively serve the community.
"Yes, his residency is in question," said candidate and former council president Nellie Moyeno Thursday. "He left the Housing Authority years ago and hasn’t been on a lease for the past seven years. Then, all the sudden, he comes back and expects to walk right on to the City Council. Here is a man that went to law school but is now violating the intent of the laws that he was supposed to be studying. He hasn’t lived here for the past year, so he shouldn’t be running."
Another opponent, candidate Michael Lenz, said, "It seems like to me that everyone remembered him as a kid playing Little League, but then they didn’t see him for seven years."
Campos does not contest that while he was at school he was not active in local politics. "I was a student busy pulling myself up from the bootstraps, and was paying my way through school," he said. "As much as I would have liked to participate, I just didn’t have the time."
Lenz feels that he should take time to earn the position.
"Saying that he periodically came to Hoboken for weekends is not a defense for an inappropriate position that he didn’t earn," said Lenz. "It’s not right that the first time that he will be voting in a city election, he’ll be voting for himself."
Legal action
Moyeno said that she did consider legal action to attempt to get Campos taken off the ballot, but because of time and money issues, she did not. "I approached an attorney and I was told that I had 45 days after he was sworn in to challenge his appointment," said Moyeno. "So that time has passed. Even if I felt like I could press the matter, I don’t have the funds right now to hire an attorney, seeing that I am paying for most of my own campaign by myself."
Lenz said, "I feel that if we had a lawyer working for us, we could knock him off the ballot. The fact that he had never been to a City Council meeting ’til he was a councilman, the fact that he is still hasn’t participated in a Planning Board meeting. He has not voted in his entire life for a Hoboken city council person. In my mind he is just not ready for public service."
According to the office of the Hudson County Supervisor of Elections, Campos has not voted in previous Hoboken elections. He only registered to vote in Hoboken in May of 2001.
Put up or shut up
Campos argued Tuesday that lack of legal action shows that his opponents don’t have much of a case against him. "If my detractors truly believed what they say," he said, "then they could easily pursue this in a legal forum and let a court decide. But they know that no court would rule in their favor, so all they are doing is putting this issue out as political fodder but aren’t willing to back it up in the courts."
Lenz said that he is taking that approach of letting the voters decide.
"If the voters think that Chris has lived here and he is the most experienced and the most qualified, then they will show it by their vote," he said. "In the end, it will be the voters who have the last say on his residency."