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.
One thing that gets under my skin is when machine politicians bash other machine politicians for being -- you guessed it -- "machine politicians." Either change your style of politics or accept what you are and stop being a hypocrite tossing that label at others.
But that, like many things in politics-as-usual, is just a fact of life we have to live with.
But I find it really abhorrent when machine politicians accuse non-machine politicians of being machine politicians. That is the case in today's Political Insider column in the Jersey Journal discussing Hoboken's Fourth Ward do-over run-off.
Battling it out are former Councilman Chris Campos and current Councilwoman Dawn Zimmer. The columnist writes about a press conference Campos and supporters held to discuss the race.
Much of the press conference had Campos and Councilman at Large Peter Cammarano arguing that Zimmer stole the election using illegal tactics orchestrated by the Hudson County Democratic Organization. Cammarano said there have been only three other cases in New Jersey political history where a candidate had to vacate a seat.
.....
Cammarano listed a number of HCDO people who worked for Zimmer, including North Bergen spinmeister and consultant Paul Swibinski. He even rejected criticism of Campos getting help in the runoff investigation from former Jersey City Mayor Gerald McCann as "a page out of the HCDO playbook."
Of course who just happens to pass by the press conference but Gerald McCann -- 'on his way to register voters for Campos,' he told the columnist. And the only people active in this Fourth Ward race who have ever paid the HCDO's Swibinski are Cammarano and Campos (They hired him two years ago for their race with Hoboken Mayor David Roberts).
In fact, it's rather funny to hear Zimmer labeled as an 'HCDO tool' because people who run in Hoboken and Hudson County political circles know what kind of politician Zimmer is: a wide-eyed, elitist, newcomer, reformer, do-gooder type. She doesn't get down and dirty with the machine. They tried to enlist her, but failed. They endorsed her because Campos now runs with Brian Stack's HCDO splinter-group, DFHC. And while she accepted their endorsement, she turned her nose up at their help -- rather naively. Most people wrote her off for that reason, but she pulled an upset on a rainy and (what should have been) a low-turnout day.
'Ha. Newcomers vote,' the HCDO shrugged and walked away. They would laugh even harder when they heard that Zimmer agreed to re-do the election. 'Naive, rookie mistake.' You're supposed to keep your head down and never admit mistake, no matter how small. "There have been only three other cases in New Jersey political history where a candidate had to vacate a seat" because people who know politics know you fight it in court all the way. Never deny your victory. That's what a machine politician would do, that's the advice the HCDO would have given Zimmer.
But Zimmer's decisions show she is no machine politician.
Now for Round Three and the HCDO isn't running to her side. They're too focused on the next primary. Their only presence in this race comes out of the mouths of Cammarano and Campos, who, in the DFHC are more machine than 2,000 Dawn Zimmers.
This is not to say whether the Fourth Ward's needs would be better served by either Campos or Zimmer, or who is running a cleaner campaign. I can't attest to that. I don't live there.
But I do know what kind of politicians these are, and this mischaracterization of Zimmer by Campos and Cammarano is just plain wrong.
The Jersey Journal's "Political Insider" gets the quote of the day today. This time, he's talking about Gerald McCann heading the "investigation" into the Hoboken 4th ward runoff election for city council. Why is this a juicy topic? Because it's going to court, of course!
It will be up to Assignment Judge Maurice Gallipoli how the trial progresses. The more witnesses and evidence he allows, the better the autopsy of an emotional and heated campaign. The municipal election was seen as a surrogate battle between the HCDO and the rival Democrats for Hudson County of Union City Mayor Brian P. Stack, Sires, Weehawken Mayor Richard Turner and a majority of Hoboken City Council members.
Ah, that's not quote of the day material. This last bit is
Putting McCann in among Zimmer's reformer friends is a bit like dropping a boa constrictor in a warren of bunnies.
