| The worst thing that can happen to a politician is to get caught on the wrong side of a paradigm shift. Nothing makes a person so outdated as speaking to the electorate that is, quite literally, dying off.
One such paradigm shift is being driven by the technology of the internet. While internet activism is not enough, on its own, to force, change, we have seen here in New Jersey that a community of people who will raise their voices - and who will work offline as well - can change the political landscape of the state. Blue Jersey has always tried to stay on the forefront of that shifting paradigm, and in some cases, we have driven it ahead of us.
But there is no shortage of politicians who just can't see it. |
| Take, for example, David Ganz. Even after being booted out as mayor of Fair Lawn, in large part to his complicity in helping Joe Ferriero and the Bergen County Improvement Agency make money and political favors on the Fair Lawn Recreation Center, he still can't understand that this new age of open government cannot - and will not - tolerate public corruption. So he defends Joe Ferriero and denigrates those who call for Ferriero's ouster.
Or, if you prefer, take a look at David Roberts, quite possibly the worst mayor in the state. What do you do when your city is taken over by the state because you haven't been able to handle municiple finances? Why, with one hand you boost taxes every way possible. And with the other? Well, you build a new police HQ. And, yes, this is during the same calendar year when the Hoboken SWAT team was busted for hanging out at Hooters instead of helping patrol New Orleans after Katrina and a lawsuit from several Latino officers charged racism on the force kept them from advancing. I'm not saying the police don't need a good cop shop out of which to work, I'm just saying that this probably isn't the best time to tell voters they have to dig a little deeper to build it.
Then you have Secaucus mayor, Dennis Elwell. Elwell got up on his moral high horse and demanded that a pornography convention be moved from a private convention center because of public morality concerns.
I'm sure Mayor Elwell has also been all over Comcast for allowing pornography to be beamed into every home in Secaucus, too. Yep. I'm sure of it. Because he wouldn't be a big enough ass to demand that an event billed as "Exxxotica NY" be taken out of town, in part, because it referenced New York when he was standing only a mile or two from the stadium where the New York Giants and New York Jets play, right?
At least the good mayor let everyone know that residency comes with restrictions: "The town of Secaucus is a small, residentially oriented community," Elwell said at a news conference earlier today. "I don't like people walking around Secaucus that like being whipped and burned."
Um, I don't want to see people walking around Secaucus getting burned and whipped, but what consenting adults do in private is their business. If they want to hold a tradeshow, that's none of my business - as long as they keep minors out. Am I to understand Mr. Elwell will now be accosting out-of-towners and inquiring about their sex lives? Do I understand him to say that he has run all of "those people" out of town already?
But Mayor Elwell seems to have a problem with human sexuality - after all, he failed to discipline volunteer firefighters for terrorizing a gay couple in town. If memory serves me correctly, he once said he didn't understand "all the fuss" over marriage equality - so caring about Constitutional rights is not exactly his strong point.
But it seems that hypocrisy is: This, of course, raised some eyebrows among the political people around Hudson County since nearly all of them are aware of Elwell's annual party at the League of Municipalities Convention each November held in one of the most notorious strip clubs in Atlantic City and for years paid for out of his campaign reelection fund.
"I advise my clients to avoid Elwell's party in Atlantic City" said one political consultant. "It is not a place where anybody wants to be seen in."
City officials during the Elwell administration have done much to accommodate a strip club in Secaucus -- one allowed to continue to remain open after the municipalities banned them - even walking the club owners (based in Upper Saddle River) through reconstruction permits and environmental cleanup issues.
Sex industry conventions are not new to Secaucus either. For more than a decade from the late 1980s to the late 1990s - shows were held at the one time Meadowlands Hilton Hotel without protest from local officials. |
