Phil Alagia

Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo today in the Hall of Records.

NEWARK – A soundtrack of Chris Christie’s favorite Jersey songster wailing on a mouth harp flooded the room as Essex County politicians and staffers filled the first floor of the Essex County Hall of Records, but Phil Alagia clarified that there was a reason why he didn’t select Springsteen’s magnum opus.

 “We were going to play ‘Born to Run’ but we realized that would not be a good song for him (Christie) today,” said County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo’s chief of staff and hard-nosed Democratic Party operative.

With a light touch, Alagia made sure people understood that DiVincenzo and company’s celebration of Christie’s seven-year service as U.S. Attorney should not be misconstrued as a statement of support for Christie should the Republican decide to run for governor and rebrand a battered statewide party.

“I’m 100 percent with Corzine,” he said.

Ditto DiVincenzo, the County Executive explained when it was his turn to herald Christie, who went 130 and 0 in pursuing corruption cases against public officials. Theirs is a special relationship, he admitted – indeed, a friendship - and not just because the man affectionately termed “Joe D” and Christie are both Newark natives.

County Chairman Phil Thigpen: Politicker photo 

NEWARK - It was appropriate that their office should stand across the street from the War Memorial. Sized up as a group, they were the veterans of a lot of Essex County wars.

The office setting, too, underscored tough times, like a set-piece out of "Glengarry Glen Ross.".

A former Countrywide home loan office that went belly up in a bad economy, this storefront a few doors down from the Robert Treat Hotel now houses the county’s Obama campaign headquarters, which officially opened Monday.

"You could say we’re one good thing to come out of them going out of business," said West Ward Councilman Ronald C. Rice, county campaign coordinator, standing in the split level, nearly wallpapered over now with Obama campaign signs.

DENVER - State Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex) hopes to help her team belt the GOP out of the ballpark on Nov. 4th, but so far Democrats remain uncomfortable in their own dugout.

Ruiz, Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo and Chief of Staff Phil Alagia all took turns at the plate at Coors Field on Tuesday, with DiVincenzo sending a couple of the pitches deep into the outfield, according to Ruiz and Alagia.

"I'm giving up my career in politics to try out for the Colorado Rockies," DiVincenzo said. State Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex) works on her batting technique with Dodger legend Steve Garvey.: Courtesy of Phil Alagia

Barrett and Kerry synchronize their BlackBerrys.: Politicker photo  

DENVER - Essex County operative Tom Barrett didn’t really have a horse in the race at this point. But Essex County Freeholder Linda Lordi Cavanaugh and her friends did.

This would be Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-NY) "Don’t Cry for me Argentina" moment, and consummate party insider Barrett wanted to make sure the diehard Clinton supporters got there for the coming Clinton catharsis.

He settled up with the waiter at the Palms and high-stepped it for Lawrence Avenue where Cavanaugh and company were already hobbling double-time on high heels on their way out to hail a cab.

As the Clintonistas piled in, Barrett caught sight of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) emerging from one, and soft-shoeing after a high-class-looking brunette.

Steve Adubato, Jr., presides over a meeting between Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo, center, and Sen. Joseph Kyrillos.: Politicker photo 

SPRING LAKE - They drove and were driven to the Irish Riviera from all corners of New Jersey, in cars with government plates on them and dark SUVs and sedans with tinted glass, sporting sunglasses and paunches covered with sports jackets, mostly Democrats and a handful of Republicans, converging on this mansion by the sea.

Congressmen and mayors and assembly people and state senators and opposition researchers and retainers.

Standing at the front of the Seashell Dining Room in the Breakers to greet them was Steve Adubato, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and welcoming smile - and casting an eye that invariably sharpens human activity into the lineaments of political theater.

"I believe in the luck of the Irish," said the executive director of Newark’s North Ward Center and head of the Democratic Party in the North Ward, facing a sun-filled room packed with rivals hunched over plates of eggs and bacon: Gov. Jon Corzine and Republican State Party Chairman Tom Wilson; former Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo, and Assemblyman Albert Coutinho and Assemblwoman Grace Spencer; Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo and Assemblyman Thomas Giblin (D-Montclair).

In this poor man’s Olympiad of Jersey ethnic groups gathered under one roof, Adubato highlighted - as he does annually at this North Ward Center-sponsored breakfast - the Irish, who now number 141,379 registered voters in New Jersey, or 47,514 Democrats, 36,063 Republicans and 57,802 independents.

Obama State Director Tricia Mueller: Politicker photo

HAMILTON - Politics and union organizing weld into one for Tricia Mueller, the new state director for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

Granddaughter of a Local 19 sheet metal worker or "tin knocker" as they're called in building and trades, Mueller first started working campaigns for her father, a telephone installer who served as the youngest mayor of Oaklyn, New Jersey.

"I could read a ward map from the time I was very small," said the 34-year old Camden native and chief political operative for the 17,000-strong New Jersey Regional Council of Carpenters, as she sat in a Hamilton coffee shop on Thursday, three days into her tenure as Obama's state director.

"I come from the field," she told PolitickerNJ.com. "I believe voter contact, voter mobilization, and voter education represent civic duty at its finest."

County Executive Joe DiVincenzoNEWARK - The Essex County Executive and Newark’s senior senator today both panned a proposal by North Ward Democratic leader Steve Adubato and a few others to dump County Chairman Phil Thigpen in favor of a longtime member of Adubato’s inner circle.

County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo and state Sen. Ronald Rice (D-Newark) pledged their full support for Thigpen, and denounced Adubato’s attempted power play to deliver the chairmanship to his friend, Adrianne Davis.

"Steve’s a guy who wants his epitaph to be, ‘I controlled everything in my life,’ but he’s just a guy with a big ego, who wants everyone to kiss his behind like we’re out here picking a bunch of cotton bales, black, white and Latino, all of us," Rice said. "To hell with Steve."

Himself a longtime Adubato ally who came up out of the North Ward, DiVincenzo stopped short of Rice’s all-out assault on his friend and political mentor, but was clear in his disapproval.

Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzoMidway through his second term, Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo is gearing up for whatever fight comes his way as he plans for a third term in office.

"Joe is looking ahead to running, and serving, to complete the execution of his vision for Essex County," said chief-of-staff Phil Alagia.

To that end, DiVincenzo today is holding a $300-a head celebration in West Orange.

An ally of North Ward Democratic leader Steve Adubato, Sr., who supports U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews (D-1) for U.S. Senate over incumbent U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, DiVincenzo to date has remained neutral in the U.S. Senate primary.

Senate President Richard Codey lost his first election of his 35-year political career on Tuesday when he was defeated in a race for delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Codey, who was listed on the ballot with John Edwards, received just 746 votes. In Codey’s delegate district, Barack Obama (who had Codey’s support) beat Hillary Clinton by just 732 votes – 28,777 to 28,045. For the record, eight Democrats, including the Rev. Reginald Jackson, Essex County Freeholder Patricia Sebold, and Democratic strategist Phil Alagia can say they once beat Codey in a Democratic primary.

Terrance Bankston, an aide to Newark Mayor Cory Booker, says he'll run for Freeholder in 2008
The 25-year-old Constituent Services Director for the city of Newark has formed a committee to explore a potential bid for Essex County Freeholder At-Large.

Terrance Bankston, a native Newarker who ran Mayor Cory Booker’s south ward campaign operations for the 2006 election, says he offers youth, education and experience.