Most Hobokenites don’t know Gina Tosatto

Most Hobokenites don’t know Gina Tosatto.

However, anyone who enjoys and has benefited from the hard-won gains of good government over the past decade owes her a debt of gratitude. Back when winning a Reform mayor and City Council majority seemed all but a pipe dream, Gina was in the Hoboken trenches every weekend and many weekday evenings, pounding the pavement, registering voters, phone-banking, door-knocking and doing whatever was asked of her.

She was a soldier for Reform, a dedicated and reliable one. She did not even live in Hoboken at the time – but worked her butt off for our community because during the dark days of the Bush years, she believed good government was a trickle-up phenomenon and wanted to elect leaders she believed in at the local level in Hoboken and Jersey City, starting in 2005.

In Jersey City, she was a core volunteer on Steve Fulop’s first City Council campaign and has remained close to him to this day. She was an early and loyal supporter, and his 2005 victory and string of wins ever since has always given her hope that when you believe in something and work hard at it, you really can win and see change as a result.

In Hoboken, she was one of the hardest-working volunteers on the Marsh for Mayor campaign as well as Theresa Minutillo’s first Board of Education run, in the days even before Kids First came together as an organization, when she was essentially flying solo and needed all the help she could get.

Throughout the ’05 election, Gina trekked over from Jersey City, usually with three or four friends in tow, every single weekend, often working three canvassing shifts per day. She played a major part in the Mother’s Day plant-distribution event in Church Square Park that year. She was always cheerful, energetic and flexible, taking on whatever needed to be done, without complaint and in dedicated service of the greater good. She carried herself with few words and lots of action, doing the kind of campaign work that is often paradoxically the most anonymous yet the most critical. She gracefully endured abuse from one of her council candidates, who rudely chastised her for supporting Fulop even as she was in the midst of running a small-dollar fund-raiser for the Marsh ticket at my apartment.

Gina later moved to Hoboken and lived on Harrison Street for a few years and lent support to subsequent campaigns, eventually getting to share in the spoils of the good-government groundwork she helped lay.

She remained involved in subsequent Hoboken elections, but I fear few of today’s Hoboken politicos and activists remember the enormous role she played in ’05 – and the ’05 election was a critical step in galvanizing forces for the big wins in ’07, ’09 and beyond.

Gina’s latest battle is not in the political trenches but the cancer ward. And like the ’05 Hoboken campaign, it’s a battle she’s fighting valiantly but does not appear to be winning. She’s struggling hard, but also being brutally honest with people about the harsh reality of her situation.

Part what’s keeping her spirits high during this challenging time has been revisiting high points in her life with those who shared them with her. Her work on the ’05 campaign was certainly a high point for Hoboken, as she gave of herself abundantly for a community she didn’t even live in out of belief in something bigger – and Hoboken is better for it.

Gina is someone who’s spent her life -- or at least the 14 years I’ve known her -- standing up for what she believes in and not just talking but doing something about it, consistently and diligently. As she goes through the process of taking stock of her life, my hope is that those who worked with her in Hoboken recognize and appreciate her service, and that she’s as proud of the difference she’s made in her impactful life as I am of the honor and privilege of having known and worked with her.

GA note: Thank you, Gina for all you have given to Hoboken and it's Reform movement. You are an inspiration.  It is an honor and privilege to meet you in cyber-space.  Godspeed.