No comments: Council silences Vaughn with civics lesson
The political pendulum of Trenton government swung hard right Wednesday during a city council meeting.
East Ward Councilman Joe Harrison headed the meeting in absence of City Council President Kathy McBride.
Harrison fielded a request to cancel civic comment. He received support from South Ward Councilman George Muschal and North Ward Councilwoman Marge Caldwell-Wilson. With only five council members seated, civic comment never occurred.
After years of rants that Kathy McBride, Robin Vaughn, Sonya Wilkins and Santiago Rodriguez had hijacked city government in a blackish power move, Harrison, Caldwell-Wilson and Muschal returned the favor, intent on preventing Vaughn from potentially delivering her patented lambast of colleagues and Mayor Reed Gusciora.
“It’s meant to keep me quiet. It’s Joe Harrison doing the mayor’s bidding,” Vaughn reasoned.
Of course it’s about revenge and politics, especially after McBride sided with the no civic comment agenda previously.
Of course, a smidgen of racial politics runs through this state capital where many people have lost hope in leadership.
And, certainly Harrison and Gusciora enjoy a political bromance that likely will gain the East Ward Councilman a presidency. In fact, when dust settles on the runoff election for North and South wards, Trenton could show two males and six women heading city government.
A recent election fiasco that featured malfunction of voting machines tainted opinions about participation in the voting process. The numbers keep changing but about 20-percent of people voted.
Now, a challenge occurred about the formula used to determine atlarge council seats. Trenton City Council At-Large Candidates Kadja Manuel, Taiwanda Terry-Wilson, and Alex Bethea filed a joint complaint against the City of Trenton Municipal Clerk and the Mercer County Board of Elections.
The complaint alleges Trenton Municipal Clerk, Brandon Garcia, messed up horribly.
The complaint notes Garcia has “failed, “neglected”, and refused to provide petitioners with calculations of the number of voters who cast at least one vote in the election.
“On Election Day, despite voting machines breaking, and election officials scrambling to run an all-paper election, we were successful in placing in the top six, and according to released results, it does not appear that any candidate received 50%+1 of the vote. NJ state statute is pretty cut and dry. Not only do we believe that the municipal clerk used the wrong formula, but he has also failed to offer the voters of Trenton the transparency they deserve by refusing to show his work”, said Manuel.
The offended petitioners are represented by election lawyer Flavio Komuves of Weissman & Mintz, Somerset.
“The New Jersey Supreme Court has spoken: if there is any doubt about whether a candidate has received a majority, a runoff election is required. Here, a runoff is mandated by law for the Trenton atlarge council seats.”
The calamitous election included Gov. Phil Murphy offering an endorsement for seated Mayor Reed Gusciora although state monitors control most Trenton government actions; at-large candidate Yazminelly Gonzalez being challenged about residency; South Ward candidate, Jenna Figueroa Kettenberg, being criticized about her alleged Latina heritage while she dissed the candidacy of rival Evangeline Ugorji who apparently had signatures of two dead people amongst her accepted petitions; and City Clerk Garcia seemingly in way over his head.
Trenton politics remains dysfunctional, personal and pitiful. Hardly anyone cares anymore which means this city appears doomed.
One solution exists to change all of this — vacation. Taking my black angst out of here for a trip to Charleston, S.C. Answers on how to build a better Trenton upon return.
See y’all in a week.