![]() “It’s a tradition that is rooted in our political DNA,” said Pfeiffer, assistant director of the Bloustein Local Government Research Center at Rutgers University.Īll dynasties die, however, due either to internal divisions or, as was the case in Englewood Cliffs, Rockaway Township and Palisades Park, an attack by political outsiders. In Palisades Park, Michael Pollotta used his position as Democratic Party chairman to control the borough’s politics from 1961 until he was ousted iin 2016. “And the bosses, it turns out, have been the most venal and corrupt political manipulators outside, perhaps, the 16 blocks of Pennsylvania Avenue.”Īnd these North Jersey political dynasties often prove remarkably durable. “New Jersey residents are among the nation's best educated and most affluent voters, but they have appeared content over the years to leave politics to local political bosses,” according to the 1974 American Political Almanac, which remains definitive, said Marc Pfeiffer, an expert in New Jersey government. ![]() By controlling municipal and school district budgets, government contracts and jobs, election rules and political donations, cronies were rewarded and opponents quashed. ![]() "This just makes us look even more ridiculous," said Paul Minenna, one of two men recently appointed to serve as mayor of Rockaway Township simultaneously.Īll of this outrage - some of it feigned, some of it pure and seething - is rooted in the death of a local power structure, and the scramble for power that followed.įor years Rockaway Township, Palisades Park and Englewood Cliffs each had its politics controlled by a small group of insiders. ![]() What’s to explain the silly, often offensive, always embarrassing fights currently tearing these three towns apart? ![]()
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