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| Another Heinis scoop! |
Another day, another election surprise.
As some expected, today Councilman Mike Russo endorsed mayoral candidate Freeholder Anthony 'Stick' Romano.
It was only last June, after he won his Freeholder Primary that Romano was feeling burned by old Hoboken friends. GA wrote:
Back then, Russo appeared to be with the backstabbing backstabbers. Only he wasn't. Sources tell GA that Russo never liked DeFusco.
Okay... but did that ever matter? More likely than not, the real reason that Russo never supported DeFusco is to keep North Bergen grifters out of Hoboken- his turf.
Makes sense, right?
So when GA heard about the endorsement, I called Romano, who didn't know that Hudson County View had broken the news!
Aware of his strained relationship with Russo, I asked Stick, "How did you get Mike Russo's endorsement?"
Stick replied, "Mello! Dave Mello and Russo are like buds. Mello brought in Russo."
GA: "So what does Russo bring you?"
Stick: "Russo will cut into Ruben's base..."
Romano also confirmed a rumor that the development community has dumped DeFusco. Why? They ("big developers") don't think he's a sure thing. Romano told me, the developers were staying out, but...
A Hudson Reporter insider told me that the paper was probably backing Romano. Hmm.
In the meantime, sources tell GA that North Bergen boss Joey Muniz was squiring Mike DeFusco around at a recent Guttenberg political event, introducing him as "Hoboken's next mayor."
What else has DeFusco been up to?
Last week, he unsuccessfully tried to kick Karen Nason and Ron Bautista off the ballot, claiming both had so many redundant signatures (people who signed more than one petition) they did not have sufficient valid ones.
Alas, the City Clerk told DeFusco that no such action would be taken until all of the ballot signatures were evaluated.
Stay tuned people, there is more Hoboken meshugas to come...
Russo never having liked DeFusco is 100% accurate. DeFusco was all the way on the inside of Cammarano's brief reign. Russo was in a bad place at that time. He was seriously concerned that Cammarano was going to be the center of Hoboken's political gravity for years to come, and took him at his word:
ReplyDelete"In this election, hopefully, we, you know, we get to the point where I’m sworn in on July 1st, and we’re breaking down the world into three categories at that point. There’s the people who were with us, and that’s you guys. There’s the people who climbed aboard in the runoff. They can get in line. And there are the people who were against us the whole way. They get ground - they get ground into powder."
Ostensibly, Russo fits nicely into the second category, having supported Mason in the first round but climbed aboard the Cammarano train in the runoff when his picks for Mason's ticket, Addeo and Morales, joined Alicea as Cammarano's new running mates. The problem is, unbeknownst to Zimmer at the time, Russo was actually involved with forces working surreptitiously on her behalf in the runoff. The reason? Longtime Russo friend and ally Tom Bertoli already had his sites on sending his man Fulop to Drumthwacket or the Senate, and didn't want any other strapping young rising political stars getting in the way. He saw Cammarano as a threat to his long game, and wanted to nip it in the bud. So he had the Russo's publicly supporting Cammarano but actually working for Zimmer. Like I said, Zimmer didn't know this - and they pulled some dirty tricks to trip up Cammarano where if she HAD known, she would have called the cops.
But Cammarano knew. And Russo was well aware that put him solidly in the "powder" bin. And he was deeply concerned his family power and future ambitions were finished and that Cammarano's power would continue to grow exponentially. And during that brief stretch, the Cammarano coterie of DeFusco, Occhipinti, Gonzalez, Maurer, Goldberg, Novak, etc., etc., made no bones to Russo or any of his clan about where things stood.
Russo is also a lot smarter and more of a long-term thinker than some of his sometimes allies-of-convenience, often having referred to Carmelo Garcia as a "weasel" and Perry Belfiore as "a douche." He knows DeFusco is a vessel just like Giattino, just a different flavor. Romano is much more consistent about who he is, where you stand with him, and how the loot gets divvied up. Russo's kind of guy.
As for Mello, he's always prided himself on being a guy the other side can "talk to." He gets off on being the swing vote, and when there was a 5-4 council, he lorded his vote over the Reform side like a kid offering you a lick of his icecream and then pulling it away yelling "Sike!" Few things aroused him in politics more than going underground in the week leading up to an important vote and not returning his colleagues' calls to let them know where he stood, always waiting to the last minute to see which way the wind was blowing and then drop some haughty speech like he's the one deciding which way this thing is going.
As always in this town, you can only flirt with the Dark Side so long before either seeing the war for what it is and getting on the right side of it, or losing track of right from wrong and becoming less a swing vote than a full-fledged bad guy. Dave may have chosen differently if he'd been picked to be on Ravi's ticket, but there came a point where he was more trouble than he was worth and had burned his bridges. If Romano sees value in Mello having a good relationship with Russo, that's about the only political value anyone could see in him.
Hatfield McVictim is over at the Hudson County View story on this commenting as Mason4Bhalla making fat jokes, Sikh puns and lying that Ravi is in bed with Beth.
ReplyDeleteJust don't say that kind of behavior is "small" of him, because THAT would be offensive!
Sorry, I forgot, it's PropellerMcVictim these days.
DeleteWhat makes you think that's Propeller McVictim as opposed to his pathetic Giant clone? The two have been interchangeable. It's almost as if Propeller did a mind meld on his Giant McVictim at a NHSA meeting and took over his brain.
DeleteMaybe we should start calling him Giant McClone.
The writer on HCV seems pretty sure that Bhalla has taken funds from Mason. If that's true, it will be very damaging for Bhalla.
DeleteIt's NOT true. Bhalla would eat dirt before he'd take a penny from Beth Mason. Don't pay attention to evil trolls and malevolent giants.
DeleteGlad to hear it, and sorry for bringing up the name of that woman.
DeleteBy writer you mean John Heinis? Or the anonymous troll calling himself mason4bhalla or something like that using Sikh puns?
DeleteThat's either Propeller McVictim or Giant McClone which is all that needs be said.
Since DeFusco defeated Castellano, Russo's cousin, it would have been a stretch for him to support anyone but Romano. The other thing Russo and Romano have in common is that they live in subsidized housing at the expense of everyone else. Haven't heard any candidate talk about property taxes, but look around. Stevens owns all this prime real estate and pays no property taxes, Church Towers, Marine View and all the senior buildings pay no property taxes, and the last thing we need are more affordable housing units and extensions of PILOTs like Church Towers received, courtesy of Mason's machinations. That particular PILOT should be revoked and all the lost tax revenue paid to Hoboken because the owners of CT have not lived up to the agreement. But city council would rather dick around over manufactured crises.
ReplyDeleteOne hundred percent correct. Also, the coalition around DeFusco is largely the same team that defeated Anthony Russo in 2001. Every alliance between them and the Russos since then has been purely utilitarian and unnatural.
DeleteIt's the same alliance but without Michael Lenz, Carol Marsh and Bernie Kenny who are all part of the Giattino inner circle.
ReplyDeleteAs we get closer to election day and it becomes clear that Giattino is not in the mix it will be interesting to see in which direction those rats flee the sinking ship. Will they reach out to their old 2001 allies? Or will they go with the Russos who Lenz and Marsh have played footsie with since Lenz was fired by Roberts in 2003.
A very good question. Of course, that crew isn't always in it to win it - or at least, sometimes their definition of winning isn't measured at the ballot box. Remember Marsh's quixotic 2007 Assembly race on Sal Vega's ticket. An arrangement brokered by Lenz to deliver the Hoboken reform base in a Hail Mary against Brian Stack. They knew they had no shot at winning the election, but scored a victory of a different sort - a county job for Lenz and HCDO vice chairmanship for Marsh.
DeleteThese people know Jen Giattino ain't gonna be mayor. The question is what they've got lined up for themselves if they're successful in fielding her as a spoiler for DeFusco so the family can come back under the same roof.
As in 2007, our loss will be their gain.
today is officially declared "hoboken political history lesson day", straight up. it's so clear that other local blogs either don't know squat or are just all spinned out by lenz's forked tongue.
ReplyDelete