By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
At the end of the day, Save Jerseyans, all of the wonderful policy ideas, ideological discourse, and good intentions in the world can’t save our state if the voters in some of our largest population centers continue to vote for crooks.
We got a reminder of why our state’s largest population center remains troubled on Friday when a New Jersey state appeals court decided that former Newark Mayor Sharpe James improperly used his campaign funds to pay legal fees. James was convicted of five counts of fraud by a federal jury in 2008 and ultimately served two years in prison (before getting busy on his book).
It’s been a long time in coming. Back in 2011, the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC) sued him over $94,000 in misappropriated campaign funds; Friday’s decision upholds a lower level court’s 2012 ruling.
But what else is new? It’s all part of a pattern. New Jerseyans (and many Newarkers) had high hopes for his successor, Cory Booker, hero of the Street Fight documentary. Those dreams went unrealized. Not a damn thing changed.
Ras Baraka is the current man in charge; he’s ideologically indistinguishable from Sharpe James but without any of the charisma of Cory Booker that made his predecessors’ respective tenures intermittently entertaining if nothing else.
I don’t have much hope for the next generation either. Sharpe’s son, John Sharpe James, is now a councilman and he shares his father’s penchant for the eccentric, attending Santa Claus conventions and, most recently, being allegedly almost run-down by an Irvington police captain. Let’s hope that’s as colorful as he gets.
I could go on, and on, and on, going deeper into the Brick City’s history, but there’s no need to depress you over the weekend, Save Jerseyans.
Just do me a favor? Share this article with the next person you hear blame Newark’s woes on a Republican governor’s educational appointments or funding decisions. I wish it was all THAT simple…
