The Stain That Won't Wash Away

 Just when a person wants a good reason to buy a new car, boiler, water heater, sheet rock up to 4', wood flooring, base cabinets, kitchen appliances, insulation, and mold/mildew remediation.... just when a person is thinking, how can I make that magic happen? along comes a historic flood.

Whoosh!

Why go to the sewage when it can come to you? 

Yep, folks. Like many of you, GA's made all kinds of new friends: Mr. FEMA-guy, Mr. Flood Insurance Inspector-Guy, Mr. PSE&G Gas Meter Guy,   Mr. Plumber-Guy...

Oh, so many new friends.  Life is good.

Strangely, the waters of Sandy that swept through our homes, shops and apartment buildings, and drowned our heating and hot water gizmos also changed our political landscape.

Whoosh!

Gone were Move Forward's $10/hour Craig's List armies and the Move Forward cable TV ad, gone were the Move Forward midnight flyers and Nazi Truck.

Gone were Kids First from the campaign trail and their final mailer, which I hear is somewhere in limbo.

Al Sullivan said this:

If Mother Nature couldn't stop Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer from pushing through her agenda in the Nov. 6 election, how could her political opposition hope to?

Hurricane Sandy should have a boon to Zimmer opponents, who floated the idea that during the storm, the Zimmer administration largely ignored the remote areas where her support was weakest – a claim Zimmer supporters deny.

Not only did Zimmer-backed Kids First win the school board election on Tuesday’s machine vote, but Zimmer won two coveted referendums that shifted the municipal election from May to November and did away with runoff elections. While this second vote was closer in total than the first, opponents had focused most of their attention on defeating this dubious change, saying that lack of runoff elections was an invitation for political dirty tricks.

Whoosh!

Speaking of dirty tricks,  nobody blinked an eye at the Midnight flyers that flooded Hoboken before Sandy did.  Though unorthodox to splatter a non-candidate and get so filthy for a School Board election, midnight flyers are straight out of the Hudson County nasty-tool chest.

What DID get everybody's attention- from here to Trenton (and cause rumblings in the Jewish press), and caused a LOT of eye-blinking was what The Hudson Reporter called 'The Nazi Truck'.

Because NEVER in the history of filthy Hoboken campaigns has anyone EVER deigned to dig into the Third Reich history books and pull out a swastika, slap it on a truck, ride around Hoboken with it, park it in front of a huge tourist attraction (Carlos' Bakery) and park it in front of a school building, to attack a public school mom to elect a School Board slate of candidates!

It was so over-the-top, so offensive, that it was condemned by the leaders of Hoboken's Jewish community, Rabbi Robert Scheinberg of Hoboken United Synagogue and Rabbi Mose Shapiro of Chabad.

It was so politically tone-deaf, it inflamed Reform and mobilized our voters.  It even brought in NEW voters who did not care for The Nazi Truck, voters for Kids First.

You know that yours-truly was the target of this historic filthy political dirty trick.

And you know who planned and executed the Nazi Truck- James Barracato.  With help from others.

left: Nazi truck outside of Wallace schol  right: Lane Bajardi at the City Council on November 15, 2010

Barracato is Beth Mason's political operative who is on the Board of Directors for her 501(c)(3), The Mason Civic League, Inc. He has been her webmaster and rumor has it, is the one you have to go through in order to speak to Mason.

Now you know who was the victim of the Nazi Truck.  And you know who perpetrated it.

But do you know what was it's casualty?

Beth Mason's political aspirations.

Whoosh!

Because like the blood on Lady MacBeth's hands, the stain of the Nazi Truck won't wash off Mason's.  She owns it.  It will dog her for the rest of her political life.  As much as others want her money, they'd better think twice before they take on her baggage: the Nazi Truck.

Nazi Trucks belong in a David Duke campaign.  No one else's.  No one who is decent.

What an ironic twist in this bizarre odyssey. Epic poor judgement, and epic stupidity on the part of James Barracato.  He took his eye off winning an election, lost it BIG, and destroyed his employer's political future by digging into Third Reich trash bins.

Neither one can blame me.  They did it to themselves.

This is a cautionary tale of what happens to the high and mighty when they believe in their own omnipotence and use money to hurt people.