There has been a lot of ink spilled about how Dawn Zimmer was forced to vacate the Hoboken 4th Ward Council seat she stole through voter fraud - like mishandling absentee ballots, having "voters" who don't even live in Hoboken cast ballots and handing out lottery tickets along with campaign literature in an attempt to buy votes.
But, right now, I want to focus on some of Dawn Zimmer's major-league hypocrisy. There's nothing that gets my blood boiling more than a "holier-than thou" attitude - especially when its coupled with a "do as I say, not as I do" mantra. Below is a video that really hammers home this point.
For some context, I want to show how this isn't just an isolated incident of Dawn's hypocrisy. For example:
Dawn Zimmer promised to never, ever take any HCDO money... but she then went right ahead and took thousands of dollars from that very group. I'm not saying their money is dirty, just that Zimmer went against her word and broke a crystal clear pledge. Check out her original comment in the 4th Ward forum on Hoboken411.
And speaking of Hoboken 411... Dawn Zimmer claims to be a reformer who believes in transparency. But last week it came to light that she gave thousands of dollars to the moderator/creator of Hoboken411 - who hid the transaction from his readers and then went on to make the website's 4th Ward forum a free-for-all to bash Chris mercilessly - while censoring comments and banning those who support Campos or point out Dawn's deficiencies. And might I add that, along with its racist and classist undertones, Hoboken411 has recently shown its right-wing colors by lobbing attacks at Bob Menendez, Neil Cohen, Cory Booker and even that nasty, dirty organization People for the American Way. RealHoboken.com did a fantastic job of running down the story.
Dawn Zimmer talks about the evils of politics and how nasty machines are... but then her campaign's brain trust goes ahead and breaks bread at an HCDO fundraiser with recently-indicted Guttenberg Mayor David Della Donna, just days after Della Donna was indicted.
And now, to cap it all off, Dawn Zimmer - who has railed against developers and blamed them for every problem in Hoboken - is taking money and support from uber-developer Frank "Pupie" Raia... a man who said "I can buy anything." Well, apparently his money has now bought Dawn Zimmer. (In case you were curious, the woman in the back of the elevator in the above video? You guessed it. Dawn Zimmer.)
Throughout this campaign - aside from talking about fecal fruit - the only two things Dawn Zimmer has been saying on the campaign trail are: a). Developers are bad and b). Flooding is bad.
Well, then I just have to ask why on earth has Dawn Zimmer decided to take money and support from Pupie - a developer who has exacerbated Hoboken's flooding over the last few years. This makes her hypocrisy even worse.
For 16 years, uber-developer Frank "Pupie" Raia sat on the North Hudson Sewage Authority while the floods came time and time again. And Pupie did nothing. Moreover, Raia's ShopRite development project was so poorly executed, it turned 9th and Madison into one of the worst flooding corners in Hoboken. Yet, Dawn seems perfectly content to take his "dirty" money and walk arm-in-arm, door-to-door talking with voters.
You're judged by the company you keep and held to the standards you set. When all is said and done, Dawn Zimmer has said far more than she's actually done to make Hoboken a better place. And what little action we've seen is simply riddled with hypocrisy.
Dawn Zimmer has been shown to be quite a hypocrite in many ways these past few months... but taking money and support from disgraced developer and flood-enabler Frank "Pupie" Raia really takes the cake.
