Fun with Redistricting Redux: Keeping Hawthorne in LD35

by: Bertin Lefkovic

Sat Jan 22, 2011 at 05:07:37 PM EST

There has been a lot of talk about John Girgenti's future with regards to redistricting, primarily because he was a loyalist of Governor/Senator Richard Codey's when the Steve Adubato/George Norcross axis of corruption staged their takeover of the Democratic leadership in Trenton.  As a result, neither Jeff nor Girgenti have any advocates for keeping their otherwise Republican-leaning town of Hawthorne in the very Democratic (thanks to Paterson) 35th LD on the legislative redistricting commission.  I could be wrong, but I think that if there is anything that Jeff and Girgenti agree on, is that it is in their best electoral interest for Hawthorne to stay in LD35.

But without any advocates on the LRC, the only thing that might help them keep Hawthorne in LD35 is a compelling argument that serves the agendas of some of the commission's members.  There are two members of the LRC in particular whose agendas have become quite clear over the last year.

Senator Paul Sarlo was at the center of controversy recently when his Assemblymate, Fred Scalera, resigned his seat to take a lucrative private sector job.  In an effort to curry favor with Bossman Adubato's and Governor Chris Christie's #1 flunkie, Joe DiVincenzo, Sarlo sided with Joe D on the issue of keeping the Assembly seat in Nutley for the remainder of this year even though he has been working feverishly to redistrict both Nutley and Passaic out of the district, creating an all-Bergen LD36, enraging many Bergen County leaders who wanted to see the seat go to someone in Bergen County. Joe D and Sarlo won this battle and Essex County Undersheriff, Kevin Ryan, was given the Assembly seat.

So what does any of this have to do with Hawthorne?

Assuming for a moment that Senator O'Toole is not a complete and total coward, I believe that given his history with Codey, he would like to be the one to personally end his political career.  I also think that by adding the Republican-leaning NW Essex towns to his base in Cedar Grove and Verona, he would be able to better insulate himself against primary challengers from Bergen and Passaic County, where factionalism within the GOP is an ongoing issue.  This will require a significant amount of remolding of LD27, LD28, LD29 and LD34.

Meanwhile, Sarlo is going to have to find a new home for Passaic if he wants to remove it from LD36 along with Nutley, which will most likely be added to Belleville, Bloomfield, East Orange, and the North Ward of Newark to create a safe haven in LD28 for Adubato/Joe D acolytes, Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, the aforementioned Assemblyman Ryan, and a handpicked North Ward toadie to be the State Senator.

The problem with Passaic is that it is almost entirely encircled by Clifton, requiring the two cities to be linked and combined with other Passaic County towns like West Paterson, Totowa, Haledon, North Haledon, creating a new LD34.  Separating Clifton, West Paterson, and East Orange from Montclair and Glen Ridge and adding these latter municipalities to West Orange, Livingston, Millburn, and Maplewood would create a new LD27.  Orange and South Orange would be added to the other four wards of Newark, creating a new LD29.  

Once again, what does all of this have to do with Hawthorne and LD35?

Paterson is not big enough to be its own legislative district and it is too big to be combined with both Clifton and Passaic, the latter of which Paul Sarlo would like to remove from LD36 to prevent Assemblyman Gary Schaer from challenging him in either the Democratic primary or the general election.

The only way that Sarlo can do this is to create the aforementioned new and Passaic County-centric LD34, which takes advantage of a narrow corridor between Paterson and Wayne where Haledon and Totowa border each other, connecting the towns north of Paterson with the towns south of Paterson.  However, this leaves one town and one town only (aside from LD38 towns like Elmwood Park and Fair Lawn and we are not going to bother Bob Gordon, who is going to have his share of fights going forward as Sarlo tries to take away his towns to make up for giving up Nutley and Passaic) to connect Paterson with other towns that will make up a full LD.  What is the name of that town?

HAWTHORNE!!!!!

Once Hawthorne and Paterson are connected, the LRC has options at its disposal with regards to filling out the rest of LD35 and which options they choose will probably depend to varying degrees on what O'Toole wants LD40 to look like and whether or not he wants to keep Assemblyman David Russo on his team or ship him off to LD38 for a player to be named later.

Guessing that O'Toole might choose the latter both to give Russo a chance to run for the State Senate in a new LD38 that includes Ridgewood, making it even more purple than it already was, and keep Russo from being able to take him on in the future, I kept Glen Rock in LD35 and added Midland Park and Wyckoff.

So where does that leave Jeff and Girgenti?  More or less the same as now, except that Nellie Pou is no longer a factor.  Her town (Haledon or North Haledon - I forget which one) is now in the new LD34 where she may finally have the organizational support to run for State Senate.  The wildcard, as he was when Passaic was in LD36, is Gary Schaer.  

Obviously, like Pou, he will want to move up to the State Senate, but unlike Pou, he may choose to switch parties and run against Pou as a Republican.  His Orthodox Jewish base will go with him no matter what party he runs with and he can also count on significant alliances in the Hispanic Republican community both in Passaic and in other parts of the district.  There are also Democrats in Clifton and West Paterson who may have a claim to the State Senate seat or one of the two State Assembly seats in the district.

Now that Pou is no longer a factor in LD35, what remains to be seen is where the support of the Passaic County and Paterson powerbrokers lie.  Obviously, Bill Pascrell Jr. is going to want to see his good friend John Girgenti get organizational support for his re-election.  Recently elected Mayor Jeffrey Jones may have someone in his circle who he would want in that seat.  County Chairman John Currie probably has an opinion as well.  Both the incumbent Assemblyperson from Paterson, Elease Evans, and former Mayor Joey Torres probably has some interest in the seat, but I have no idea whose backing they have or would need to get.

If I had to guess, I would guess that Currie and Jones are going to be on the same page and will be supporting someone from Paterson, not Girgenti, giving that person organizational support.  If that person is not Elease Evans, she will most likely run with that person for one of the two Assembly seats.  

If Girgenti chooses to run for re-election off the party line, he will probably recruit his former staffer, Paterson Councilman Andre Sayegh, to run for State Assembly with him. The remaining Assembly vacancies on these slates make for an extremely interesting game of political chess that will determine one way or another whether our good friend, Jeff, will be running for State Senate or State Assembly this year.

In an attempt to bring a former adversary into his fold and unify Paterson's African-American and Hispanic-American communities, I predict that Jones (and Currie) will offer organizational support for the State Senate seat to Torres, which I predict that Torres would accept.  However, if I am wrong, and Jones offers it to someone closer to him and offers Torres the other Assembly seat on his candidate's line, Torres will have a very interesting choice.  He could accept the offer from Jones, accept a similar offer from Girgenti and Sayegh to run with them, or he could build a third slate with himself as the State Senate candidate.

What Torres decides will probably determine to some degree the choices and decisions that Jeff will have to make.  If Torres agrees to run with Jones' person and Elease Evans, Jeff will have no choice but to try to create his own slate of candidates, most likely with himself as the State Senate candidate.  However, I think that it is more likely that Torres would choose to run his own slate or to run with Girgenti than take a secondary slot on a Jones slate, leaving Jeff the choice of running for State Assembly on the Jones slate or the Torres slate if there is one.  Either of these options is probably a safer route to Trenton for Jeff than running as an insurgent for State Senate in a three-way race against Girgenti and an organization-backed, Paterson-based candidate with two insurgent Assembly candidates.

There is also the possibility that Jones and Currie could join with Pascrell, Jr. in support of an organizational slate consisting of Girgenti, Evans, and Sayegh, which would all but guarantee an insurgent State Senate run by Torres and an Assembly opening for Jeff. Obviously, I would prefer to see Jeff in a slate with organizational support, but in lieu of that, running for Assembly on an insurgent slate with a former Mayor of Paterson is probably not a bad place to be.

But before any of these contingencies can even be considered, Hawthorne has to remain in LD35 with Paterson.  The alternatives, the simplest and most likely being that Hawthorne gets moved into LD40, create a much more difficult path to Trenton for Jeff.  If Hawthorne is placed into LD40, Jeff will most likely have the opportunity to run for State Senate whenever he wants it, but the odds of him or any Democrat winning in that district would be extremely remote.

Another possibility is that Hawthorne gets moved into LD38, setting up a contested primary between Girgenti and Gordon.  However, the only way that Jeff would have the chance to run for Assembly with Gordon is if Fort Lee (Joan Voss) or Paramus (Connie Wagner) are removed from the district.  He could run his own slate of candidates, but against Girgenti and Gordon, the latter of the two being a pretty good progressive during his time in Trenton, that would be an extremely tough road to hoe for Jeff.

So if we agree that Hawthorne remaining in LD35 with Paterson is an essential component of Jeff Gardner having the best chance of being elected to either the Assembly or the Senate, the next step is to do something about it.  What can we do? We can share this diary (or write your own) with as many people as possible, making it clear to the powers that be in both the Democratic and Republican Parties that we recognize the fact that they are going to play their inside baseball games and do what is best for their agendas and interests, but that if there is one thing that they can do that would please the progressive community as a whole, it would be to leave Hawthorne in LD35 with Paterson.  I don't think that this is a lot to ask.  Do you?