Reform Clocks The Old Guard

This Tuesday was election day in Hoboken. Amazingly on city wide vote Gov. Christie actually prevailed (he did it in 4 other Hudson Co towns) 56-44%. On a local level Mayor Zimmer and Kids First easily won their races. But if you read Hoboken411 you would barely know that this election ever took place, except for one article riddled with vitriol. For a website that deludes people on almost every political article I am not surprised. After all, unlike a reputable news source it never shows both sides of any issue and sometimes uses outright lies such as when it said Peter Cunningham stayed “mum” on the Beth Mason resolution designed to smear Ravi Bhalla. The fact is that almost 13,000 people showed up at the polls, which is a solid turnout based on history. It is virtually equal to the Round 1 in 2009.

Mayor Zimmer won all 7 Wards on the machine, while finishing second to Ruben Ramos in Ward 4 after the VBM votes were revealed. Thanks to hard work by Hoboken police Lieutenant Kenny Ferrante Reform even won the Marine View Towers district. In the Council race Terry Castellano easily won that district. Tim Occhipinti’s slate finished a distant 3rd to Ruben Ramos. At least Ruben was his gracious self as he conceded and congratulated the Zimmer Team on their win. As far as I know immature Tim never bothered to man up and act like a human being after his shellacking. What did you expect from him?

The results were Zimmer 47.5%, Ramos 35.5% and Occhipinti17%.Overall, Zimmer won 29 districts; Ramos won 11 and Occhipinti zero. Zimmer’s biggest vote total was Ward 2, District 6 (Tea Building area) where she snagged 317 votes or 69.5% of the vote. Ramos scored best in Ward 5, District 6 (Western 5thWard) with 298 votes or 46.6%. Occhipinti’s best total was 102 in Ward 1, District 2 (Marine View) where he netted 18.6%.

While the Zimmer Team and Kids First stuck to the high road, once again the Old Guard displayed their dark side by attempting to smear Ravi and make issues of little importance like car booting and completely lying about the progress in refurbishing and expanding Hoboken parks.

Interestingly newcomer Jen Evans actually outpolled her running mates Leon Gold and Iren Sobolov. For the Zimmer Council team, Dave Mello finished first, Jim Doyle 2nd and Ravi Bhalla a close 3rd. So much for Beth Mason and 411’s attempt to make him appear to be dishonest. Likewise we also witnessed Tim Occhipinti ads on the 411 website and I will not be surprised if they once again do not appear in his Elec report.

I had the honor to work for 6 weeks (until I began my new job) for Team Zimmer and Kids First and was lucky to meet so many new people and welcome them aboard. I even ran in to a young woman on election night who I registered to vote that came to help us that night. Overall we registered over 75 citizens who had the ability to vote this November.

After a yearlong stagnation by snubbing newly elected Jim Doyle, this January, Hoboken will finally be able to fill the Board vacancies, expand Corner Cars and once again allow sensible resolutions and ordinances to pass. The only question is whether the Old Guard will finally come to their senses and allow passage until Jim assumes his rightful position. Don’t hold your breath on this one.