BREAKING: Bhalla Transition Team!

From GA's archives of satirical Bhalla covers... well, he's come a long way, BABY!

BHALLA TRANSITION TEAM ANNOUNCED!

Here it comes, people. Mayor-elect Bhalla's first executive decision: preparing for the transition of power from the ZImmer administration.  It should gives us insight into how he will govern.

Mayor Zimmer was criticized for surrounding herself only with persons she was comfortable with. 

It already looks to me like this will be a different kind of administration. Take a look (in alphabetical order):

·         Affordable Housing - Councilwoman-elect Vanessa Falco

·         Arts, Music & Culture - Chris O'Connor & Liz Ndoye

·         Constituent Service – Assemblywoman Annette Chapparo

·         Drug Abuse Prevention – Angelo Valente

·         Economic Development - Councilman Michael DeFusco

·         Education - Councilwoman-elect Emily Jabbour

·         Infrastructure – Jon Otto & Stewart Mader

·         Public Safety - Freeholder Anthony Romano 

·         Quality of Life - Mayor David Roberts

·         Small Business Development - Karen Nason

·         Transportation and Parking - Ron Bautista

What do you think?

GA noticed one name missing- Jen Giattino.  I am told she was asked personally to head the Constiuent Service Committee, but declined.  Annette Chapparo was offered the position, and accepted.

So, here is an excerpt from this morning's press release: 

"Mayor-elect of Hoboken Ravi S. Bhalla today unveiled the leadership of his Transition Team.  Chaired by Phil Cohen, the transition leadership includes 4 of the other candidates in this year’s mayoral election and two new Council Members, who will serve as chairs of key policy committees, along with other people with expertise in Hoboken government and civic affairs selected for these important transition roles.

Each Committee Chair is charged with preparing at least 3 substantive recommendations for implementation in 2018.   
Mayor-elect Bhalla encourages any Hoboken residents that are interested in joining the Transition Team and serving on one of the transition committees to send an email to Cohen identifying their area of interest and the committee on which they are interested in serving, which will be provided to the relevant Committee Chairs or Co-Chairs. His email address is philiphcohen@gmail.com

Based on the recommendations of the Committee Chairs, the Transition Team will assemble a report to be considered by Mayor-elect Bhalla and the members of his Administration."

So there you go, people. Bhalla is not a vindictive politician, and he will run an inclusive administration.  How about participating?

AL SULLIVAN'S TWO CENTS 

Watch out, this popcorn has nuts

 In his latest column, Al had a interesting post-mortem on Hoboken's election:

Hoboken Councilman Michael DeFusco’s call for an investigation into the source of a racist midnight flyer allegedly issued by his campaign that appeared around town a few days before the mayoral election misses the point. DeFusco blames the flyer for his loss in the race... 

 Although there has been a lot of finger-pointing, DeFusco seems to think people blame his campaign for the flyer. He is demanding to find out who actually distributed it. The Police Department is apparently investigating the flyer distribution as a potential hate crime...

Many believe that the flyer produced a sympathy vote for Bhalla. The truth is, the flyer didn’t win the election for Bhalla, Anthony Romano did.

Romano split the Old Hoboken vote the same way Tim Occhipinti did in 2013. This, combined with Councilwoman Jen Giattino’s drawing newcomer votes away from DeFusco steered the election to Bhalla.

Giattino’s people aren’t happy either. They wonder if some kind of deal was struck between Romano and Bhalla, the way some suspect Occhipinti did in 2013 to allow Dawn Zimmer to win reelection as mayor with far less than 50 percent of the vote.

Although Romano supporters deny any such deal, those raising the issue are looking ahead to when Bhalla picks his director of the Office of Emergency Management. Will Romano be named to the post? Stay tuned.

My two cents:

(1) GA agrees with Al that the "terrorism" flyer did not throw the election to whiny DeFusco.   Here's why.

Bhalla beat DeFusco on the machines by 665 votes.  

DeFusco beat Ravi on VBMs by a net difference of 133 (DeFusco-325, Bhalla-192.)  

But when analyzing the impact of the "terrorism" flyer, one should focus on machine votes. That's because any impact on VBMs should be negligible since many VBMs were returned or mailed by November 3rd, the night of the flyer drop.  

Therefore, who believes that all 665 DeFusco-voters switched to Ravi Bhalla (not Stick, Giattino, Nason nor Bautista) as a result of the tampered flyer? 

Al, you are right, for a change.  Mike LOST fair and square. Trying to de-legitimatize Bhalla's win by whining that the "election was stolen" isn't a good look for him.  

(2) Oh, no! Al may be right again!  Romano's presence in the race was extraordinarily helpful. Without Romano and with Giattino, Bhalla's battleship may have sunk.  

But "what if" scenarios have infinite variations!  

What if...  there were no Giattino, Bhalla would have run a different race, focused solely on DeFusco.  In that scenario, Romano's candidacy may not have been decisive.  

What if... DeFusco had run a positive campaign? 

What if, what if, what if.  What if monkeys had wings?  

(3) As for a "pact" with Romano, why?  Stick's vote was (always) locked and loaded; DeFusco's votes were fluid, and Bhalla was competing with Giattino for Reform votes.  It never made sense (to me) to waste resources on Stick.

Personally, I don't see Freeholder Romano getting any appointment in the Bhalla administration- and remember his campaign has not been vindicated in the HPD investigation into  "FlyerGate."