The Salad Spinner Effect? With upsets in Elizabeth and Roselle, a near-win in Maplewood, and a longtime Dem councilman filing to run against Linden's storied Gregorio, restive local Democrats continue to show growing strength against entrenched Union and Essex county political machines. As development closes in on older New Jersey communities -- such as these four and Plainfield -- locals resent more and more the salad spinner effect of the county Democratic machines. The 'salad spinner' effect? This is the process by which the party extracts cash from the towns in the form of sweetheart contracts for contributor-vendors, fire sale land prices for developers, use of eminent domain to advance the private projects of pals and pols' cats-paws, and tax abatement giveaways that leave taxpayers on the hook. Is resistance futile? I don't think so. There are signs of a maturing of the electorate in older urban communities, who are getting tired of Democratic machines attempting to placate them with a few jobs and the allowance of petty local corruption. Keep on truckin'.
Who knew? You may be forgiven if you hardly knew there was a primary vote yesterday for the City Council's Ward 1 and Wards 2/3 at-large seats. Signs for Rayland Van Blake and Rashid Burney were not in evidence before mid-day Monday -- the day before the election. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans did any mailings. So, for the first time in living memory, the number of voters who turned out outnumbered the yard signs it seemed to me. But you will look in vain in the print editions of either the Ledger or the Courier for numbers. The Ledger only checks off the winners, and the Courier's print edition snubs Plainfield altogether (remember when it used to be the Plainfield Courier-News?). Oh yes, the numbers? Ward 1: Van Blake - 166, Johnson - 18; Wards 2/3: Burney - 496, Perun - 124.
-- Dan Damon
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