“I am here on behalf of Brian Stack,” shouted Christopher Irizarri, a member of a three-member mayoral recall committee, through the door of an apartment on Eighth Street in Union City. And without fail, many doors opened after that.
County Freeholder Brian Stack began a recall of the city’s current mayor, Rudy Garcia, when he filed the letter of intent, signed by the recall committee consisting of himself, Irizarri and Revenue and Finance Commissioner Ralph Fraguela, on Sept. 17.
Stack and Irizarri both ran on the same ticket for commissioner against Garcia in 1998 and are now working together again to try and recall him from the office of commissioner. They have blamed Garcia for the city’s rising taxes.
However, getting the signatures needed to hold a special election might not be as easy as persuading a resident to open the door first. The more than 100 volunteers who gathered at Union City First headquarters on 22nd Street and Bergenline Avenue on Oct. 2 have been tirelessly knocking on doors each night trying to get signatures from 25 percent of the voters registered in the last election.
“I will go out every night until the job is done,” said Irizarri, on his way to Eighth Street to collect signatures. “I figure, the sooner the better.”
The amount of signatures on the petitions of Stack’s recall movement will decide whether a special election will take place to replace Garcia or not.
not so easy
Many volunteers are finding that even getting the signatures, once they are allowed into a dwelling, is not as easy as they thought.
Many residents whom the volunteers have come across are not registered to vote or are not yet citizens, while others are a bit skeptical about signing anything.
One of the many residents that Irizarri encountered on Wednesday wanted to make sure that she wasn’t voting for anyone before she signed the petition. Another resident asked if Stack had any plans for fixing the financial problems that Union City is facing.
However, according to Irizarri, many people signed the contract after he explained the recall process and some of Stack’s plans for his turn at office.
“It is just a complicated and time consuming process,” said Irizarri. “We are making sure that everything is done by the book, so we don’t run into any problems later.”
Lawyers briefed the circulators of the petitions on what they could do within legal bounds before they were able to begin the process.
Each signer must also place a check mark in a box saying that they have read the petition and completely understood what they were signing.
The recall committee seemed to have thought of everything. A letter, reading much like an answering machine message, with the recall hotline 800 number, was left under the doors of the homes where the volunteers’ knocks weren’t responded to.
The hotline number allows residents who want to sign the petition a chance to get a circulator to come back when they are at home.
how it works
The volunteers that made their way to headquarters on Oct. 2 to kick-off the petitioning process were paired up and given a clipboard with 10 petitions and a list of addresses to visit.
“More than 70 groups went out tonight,” said Kathy Stack, treasurer of Union City First and the wife of Brian Stack.
“Each group came back with five or six sheets filled out,” she said after the first night.
By press time, Brian Stack said that they received 1,300 in the first two nights and then another 500 on Wednesday.
Petitioners will be out every night from 6 p.m. until 9 p.m.