In an editorial, Saint Peter’s University Associate Professor Michael deGruccio explains why Jersey City voters should elect Ward E Councilman James Solomon as mayor tomorrow.
On December 2, a vote for James Solomon is a vote for character. And it’s a vote against the rot of Jersey City privilege.
How so?
Remember when Amy DGgise, councilperson, and once-anointed daughter of the Hudson County Political Machine, mowed over Andy Black, a cyclist on Martin Luther King Boulevard, and then beelined to work where she waited six hours to report that something—what, she could not tell!—had transpired?
James Solomon immediately called for DeGise to turn in her badge.
And do you recall how the public soon learned that DeGise had a stash of unpaid parking tickets, had tried to use her political connections to keep her illegally parked car from being towed, had missed previous court dates, had been delinquent with personal debts, and had once been temporarily suspended at her job at a high school—for reasons the orchestrations of privilege had kept under wraps?
And do you recall the reports that Degise, a single woman with no children—who owned a home in Jersey City and grossed nearly $200K a year from her double-dipped government jobs—had (along with her boyfriend) secured subsidized housing in units intended for struggling denizens of the city?
In our City Council, only Frank Gilmore and James Sullivan categorically called for her resignation.
And you surely remember when Mayor Fulop called a press conference and demanded her immediate resignation? Nope? Me neither. Because he didn’t.
And though he stated the act was unjustifiable, he muzzled himself, perhaps because of his gubernatorial ambitions and not wanting to run crosswise with Machine privileges. He folded like wet cardboard.
How about that courageous City Council meeting after the hit-and run, when our august Council members, in unison, denounced the actions of DeGise and refused to seat her at the dais!? Nope? Yeah, I made that up too.
Our public servants instead sat there, pathetically, for over three hours, in some comatose state in their raised chairs—their hearts crumpled, eyes hollow, hearing (but not listening) as Jersey City citizens (who write their checks) decried the sickening scenario.
Our next mayor, James Solomon, refused to play that game. He unequivocally called for Degise to pack her bags.
Amy Degise correctly believed she would not be held accountable and that privilege would shield her. Damn right it did. Taxpayers are still paying for the honor of having her represent them.
This story would have shocked other towns more than it did Jersey City; around here we’ve grown used to elected officials taking bribes, steering contracts to friends, suppressing crime data, and urinating from balconies at Grateful Dead tribute shows.
Privilege has dulled our senses, eroded public trust, and bred a culture of staggeringly low expectations.
The point is not to demonize our elected political cadavers who seemed to have forgotten everything they learned as children in Sunday School, Temple or Friday prayer.
I merely use this story to demonstrate why privilege is so insidious. It eventually warps the moral senses of all those who benefit from it. Few can resist the black hole of privilege. Black holes, like privilege, bend light itself.
The disease of privilege is why this city cannot afford to elect Jim McGreevy. After all, it is partly because of Amy Degise’s fall from grace that the Machine looked to recycle McGreevy’s checkered political career into a run for mayor.
I want to be generous and even-handed here: Jim McGreevy has a good deal of experience and possesses the qualities of a leader. True, he ended his tenure as New Jersey’s governor with scandal and shame.
While governor, he made unwanted sexual advances on his political aide, while dangling high-paying promotions before the much younger man. He takes donations reeking of Trump and Kushner politics. He’s got a past.
Still, each of us has done regrettable things, and McGreevy deserves a shot at redemption and forgiveness.
But making amends for his transgressions does not mean he should be allowed near the levers of power and privilege, any more than a recovering oxycontin addict should be entrusted with filling orders behind the Duane Reade counter.
I am genuinely happy that Citizen McGreevey has found a way back from his fall. The last thing his penitent soul needs, though, is to tether itself to the Hudson County Machine.
To be sure, the Hudson County Political Machine is not the Taliban. It is not a malevolent force bent on grinding the noses of citizens. Indeed, like all political machines, it provides relative stability and secures patronage for its most faithful. Though a self-dealing monopoly, it’s an alliance between people of some competence and ethical commitments. The Machine promises a semblance of order, parades, music at the park, playgrounds, new and (sometimes) tolerable services for the community, while ensuring that those within its circle are promoted and protected. It’s not a deal with the devil. It’s a deal with the goblins of mediocrity, self-interest and half competence. Most of all, it is an alliance with privilege.
James Solomon has a proven track record of taking on predatory landlords. He is a foe to political insiders, pay-to-play developers, and the entrenched underworld of Jersey City corruption, from “boat payments” to illegal evictions.
If this promising, long-tarnished, butt-of-a-joke city has any chance of changing, it is going to take a rare breed like Solomon to lead the way. I dream of a Jersey City where takers and rule breakers have consequences.
Where double-parkers on Sip, violent drivers with illegal exhausts, deadbeat landlords, luxury developers seeking sweetheart deals, illegal weed shops, and the tax-dodging corporations are finally forced to reckon with a new reality: that the Machine has at last been rendered inoperative.
That this town is not for sale. That laws are not just for those who can buy them or who feel inclined to follow them.
A vote for James Solomon on December 2 is a vote for character.
When privilege sings her siren song, as she will to anybody who enjoys a little power, character is the surest defense. “Character” comes from the Greek word kharaktēr, a tool that stamps an image into something; it also means an engraved mark.
To have character means to have virtue permanently etched into one’s being. It doesn’t rub off. It’s not easily applied, like some decal. Once politicians have shown they have not been stamped by virtuous character, don’t be fooled.
They can’t get character by attending a few church sermons, seeking a little counseling, or using a life-coach app.
A vote for Solomon is a vote for a world where a well-connected person like Amy DeGise is treated no differently than the hard-working citizens moving about our town, like the decent people at MLK and Forrest that morning when DeGise — for all she could tell—left Andy Black mangled or dead on the asphalt.
That morning women were busily dropping off their children at the corner daycare. One woman set up a large cooler on the sidewalk to make a place for Andy to sit. Another woman hobbled through the intersection to retrieve his flip-flop from the intersection — and then patted him on the back.
Another woman looked down the road for DeGise, who had vanished from the scene. None of those ladies could have been surprised to learn later that the driver was a public official from Jersey City.
They know how things have always worked around here. They know that privilege shelters certain folks from consequences.
On December 2, let’s beat the brakes off the machine.
Michael deGruccio
Associate Professor: Saint Peter’s University
