Q&A: What happened in Hoboken, what happens next
Cammarrano won as expected, but it was damn close. What does it mean?
Q: Zimmer lost by fewer than 200 votes. How could that happen, when Mason's vote and Zimmer's vote made up a plurality?
A: Michael 'Fat Tony' Lenz and Tony 'The Joke' Soares have been running a protection racket for Hoboken's reformer-wannabes for years. In other words, if you have any kind of political footprint and want to run as a 'reform' candidate in Hoboken, you either go through them or they'll scuttle your campaign. No need to take our word for it, just ask Scott Delea or Beth Mason for their experiences in that regard.
So when it came time for the runoff, Mason threw in her lot with Zimmer (aka Soares/Lenz), but it was understandably less than wholehearted. That's not Mason's fault - it's the Zimmer campaign's responsibility to collect those votes. If they didn't make Mason happy, that's their failing.
There are so MANY ways Lenz and Soares screwed the pooch, that it's impossible to list them all. But here are a few:
1) Failing to get their handpuppet, Marsh, to make nice with Mason. We last saw Marsh running on a nightmare (losing) HCDO ticket with party hack Sal Vega, in one of the nastiest campaigns ever. This was at the behest of her guru Lenz. Lenz SHOULD have instructed Marsh to smooth things over and work with Beth, setting her a place at the table. But the cardinal rule with Soares and Lenz is that their glorification is always more important than winning a campaign. So it's no surprise they favored their usual clumsy, heavyhanded tactics here.
Number of votes lost: We'll be super-conservative with these numbers and assume that many Mason supporters held their noses and voted for Zimmer. But it's clear that not ALL of them did. Let's say, just 75 votes of Mason's 2500 or so went down the drain here.
2) Losing Inez Garcia-Keim. This happened during the freeholder elevction, when party functionary Lenz (along with the other 'reformers' in that camp), turned their backs on a woman they knew to be honest, so that the HCDO candidate would have a clear field.
As usual, Lenz and the self-proclaimed 'reform' thugs did nothing to make this right. Keim has lived in Hoboken a LONG time, and is well-known among oldtimers. They did her so wrong that she didn't just abstain from endorsing 'reformer' ZImmer - she went clear over to the other side. This reinforces point #1, above, re the loss of Mason votes, as Keim was well within the Mason camp. Let's say 10 votes were lost here.
3) Pissing off Hoboken411. Whatever you think of manchild Perry Klaussen, he runs arguably the biggest news outlet in town. How brilliant of loserboys Lenz and Soares to tick the guy off SO badly that not only did he loudly ban them from his site, he also very conspicuously pulled his former support of ZImmer.
Since that wasn't quite enough damage for them, these brilliant political operatives hit the 'net (under various names) and rumor mill to slander Klaussen. Natch this attempt inspired subsequent bad publicity for Zimmer at 411 - not just as a matter of salving wounded pride, but also as a serious matter of self-preservation on Klaussen's part.
Brilliant, boyos: Alienating the media is EXACTLY what you wanna do to help your candidate. Even readers not particularly sympathetic to the greasy Klaussen (a majority of Hoboken, apparently) were moved to sympathy for the position in which he had been placed. Votes lost: Probably closer to a thousand, but again we'll be super-conservative and say 100.
And that's the difference in the election tally, right there. A couple hundred votes, lost for no good reason. All because of the sort of stunts Soares and Lenz have pulled before and will do over and over and over again as they can find another patsy stupid and/or lazy enough to empower them. Reform's not the issue to them. Neither are the best long-term interests of Hoboken. All that matters is that they appear, to SOMEbody, to be important and powerful, right now.
We knew they would. That's why we predicted a Cammarrano win. Not because he was the people's choice - clearly, he was not. But we knew the losers would find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, once again. THAT is something we weren't about to bet against, not on your life.
Q. What does the close vote, and Cammarrano's lack of coattails, mean?
A. It suggests Cammarano (i.e., the HCDO) rigged votes at the polls, for one thing. To be specific: Cammarrano's backers rigged more voting machine votes (as opposed to paper votes) than Zimmer's insurgent HCDO backers could.
When you send in homeless people to stand in for registered voters, you don't strain their brain pan with a whole slate of names. You give them one name - the lead candidate. Paper ballots are a different story: Someone fills them out for someone else to sign, or you fake a signature. Either way, no memorization required.
That's why Cammarrano's paper ballots supported a whole slate, but at the polls it was a different story.
But the gap between Cammarrano and his slate also tells us that many Mason voters simply would not pull the trigger for Zimmer. We covered this in the previous question.
Finally, the vote tells us that mainline HCDO pols are in rough shape, despite their ability to get Healy re-elected in Jersey City. Healy waltzed in largely because of the lackluster campaigns waged against him. Not that ANY of the mayoral campaigns waged in Hoboken were anything to be proud of, but in JC even calling them 'token' is too kind. Anyway, the bottom line is that Corzine is going to have problems in November.
Q. But doesn't Zimmer more or less control the council now? Her slate won!
A. You'll have to wait a minute while we finish laughing.
OK, that's better. No - wait. OK, let's go.
First: Zimmer couldn't even control 'her' ward's vote - it went to the other guy. As we've said before, she NEVER won her ward. The HCDO swooped in and handed it to her when Campos went off their reservation. Since the HCDO mainstream wanted Cammarrano, and not Zimmer, for mayor, they simply handed those votes to him this election. That's why ZImmer's no 'reformer', she's just just an HCDO rent-a-Councilperson du jour. Her usefulness to them is that she can split the 'reform' vote and render it harmless. (At least for the time being.)
Second: As noted earlier, those votes for Zimmer's slate were actually an ANTI-Zimmer vote. Many of those votes came from Mason voters who couldn't stand the people around Zimmer and didn't like the way Mason was treated by Marsh and others. NEITHER ZImmer nor Cammarrano has 'coattails'. Cammarrano doesn't have 'em because no one on his slate made it. Zimmer doesn't have 'em because, in order to have coattails you have to ....wait for it.... ACTUALLY GET ELECTED! (duh)
Third: Council members traditionally swing their support to whomever they figure will get them re-upped. That's why, for example, DelBoccio and Cricco had no problems when Russo fell from power. They just ran on the HCDO's (Roberts) slate. The question is, who will the new Councilmembers run with come re-election time? Well, think about it. Right now, Cammarrano's got nothin'. He's going to be wooing the Council from Day One to ride his train. Zimmer, and probably Mason, will be doing the same thing. Since Cammarrano is now the guy with the keys to the HCDO's car, he's going to have an edge in wooing support from the Council. By contrast, what can Mason or Zimmer actually deliver? Yes, Zimmer will remind them 'you won on my slate', but that will only stretch so far.
So: Not only does Zimmer NOT control the new councilmembers - the new councilmembers, effectively, control HER. They are very much in the driver's seat, and she has nothing - NOTHING - to keep them in line.
Zimmer doesn't control the Council - that's a bad joke. Ultimately, the state controls the council... at least as far as the bottom line goes. Zimmer controls her newly-elected slate to about the same degree that she controls the flooding in her ward.
According to her various statements, Zimmer does not control where her money comes from, nor does she control the actions of people ostensibly working for her. We really don't know if Zimmer has any control of ANYthing.
Q. But Cammarrano IS a weak mayor, right? Doesn't that mean he can be kept in check - that he can't do too much harm?
A. Roberts was the weakest mayor Hoboken has seen in a while. Yet he managed to leave Hoboken in pretty bad shape. We're pretty confident the SS Hoboken has yet to hit bottom. Why, you can still hear the orchestra playing on deck!



















