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Fulop has already put some of his plans out there about crime, education, etc.

Healy put out his gun buy back CRAP. It was in the JJ on line after the articles about shootings & robberies.

More of the campaign silly season. Fulop's ad addresses his problem of still needing to introduce himself to voters who are not that engaged with city government. Not everybody follows this or reads the JJ.

Healy's problem is that people do know him, so his ads need to avoid anything resembling his porch or Solomon Dwek. Since his record is perceived to be so poor, he needs to try and convince people that he's actually been doing something (contrary to most peoples' perception). So he has a two-pronged strategy of tearing down Fulop while trying to "look busy."

I hope that VOTERS will demand more and really ask the candidates to spend more time on issues.

Please, PLEASE don't let us see a video of Healy drunk on his porch.

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So did Adrian Fenty.

I really like the "Hudson" video because it is different. When Fulop says "some things aren't meant to be easy" I think he means to evoke his long effort to pull our local government into the 21st century in the face of fierce resistance from many vested interests.

The ad gets you attention and delivers the message of determination and strength.

Even better--it is an authentic representation of the man. He really does compete in triathlons.

Political Insider: Healy, Fulop produce visions of selves, city in videos

By Agustin C. Torres/The Jersey Journal
March 02, 2013 at 6:09 AM

Is anyone watching the campaign videos for the May Jersey City municipal election -- or more accurately, the mayoral race?

This is where the candidates, incumbent Mayor Jerramiah Healy and Downtown Councilman Steven Fulop, are spending wads of money and the product, although not Oscar worthy, says something about how badly these two want to win.

These featurettes have some unintentional humor because the candidates want to come across as caring leaders who have deep things to say. They are not to be confused with Sir Laurence Olivier, although in one clip, Fulop gives you his impression of scuba diving adventurer Mike Nelson in the old TV series "Sea Hunt."

At times, you get the feeling that this election is being held in Hoboken. For the mayor, it's all about us against them. Healy wants to show he's part of old Jersey City, one of the boys, someone you can have a beer with, and you probably have. Yet he's still very somber.

Fulop is an outsider who wants the title but not the job, to paraphrase the mayor. According to the mantra, the councilman is one of "those people" who moved into the city -- like all those new residents -- within the past decade. And those "interlopers," which is the popularized term now, has no clue what it means to be a citizen of Haguesville. At least this is the flavor of this year's City Hall contest.

Following the old Dem playbook, the Healy faction then expertly applies negative labels, including Republican, Romney, Wall Streeter, and "1 percenter." The labels are contrary to the fact that Fulop is a Democrat and that this is a nonpartisan race. Also, Fulop has been in Jersey City longer than some pols, like state Sen. Sandra Cunningham, which I like repeating.



Healy's first video is called "Since." This one is made of clips from an interview on CNN. The mayor speaks about the city gun buy back programs, claiming Jersey City has the lowest number of homicides "since records were kept."

Fulop's take on crime in the video "How Many" is somewhat clever in that he is seated before a group of young people and asks them about hearing gun shots. Seated next to the candidate is a uniformed police officer. Critics who support Healy point out that the cop is not real but an actor and that Fulop should have used a disclaimer.



Fulop's people do not deny that he's an actor but they say police officers are not allowed to take part in political campaign ads.



And yet, in 2009 election campaign ads, Healy is seen with what seems like an army of very real police officers who are ostensibly the reason why it was claimed, back then, crime was the lowest it has ever been.

The most unusual video has to go to Fulop for the clip "Hudson." With the councilman telling us how "some things aren't meant to be easy," we see the lawmaker in wetsuit and goggles diving off the end of a Jersey City pier. He swims across the Hudson River touching a bulkhead at Lower Manhattan and heads back toward the Gold Coast with the Goldman Sachs tower dominating the skyline.



My first thought -- while wondering whether this is Fulop's Michael Dukakis moment -- was that he really, really wants to be mayor and that Healy can top this by parachuting out of an airplane over Liberty State Park or skateboarding down the Lincoln Tunnel helix in Weehawken. I also wondered whether Fulop swallowed any of that water.

At Healy's fund-raiser at Casino in the Park, the mayor's faithful hounds were howling over the video trying to figure out what the councilman was trying to say. I'll be kind and just believe they were being obtuse.

You can take a look at some of the videos which can be seen on this column on the Internet at www.nj.com/hudson/voices where the vids are each about 30-plus seconds long.

INSIDER NOTES

-- How many (expletive deleted) times do we have to tell you that we had nothing to do with that fund-raiser, to paraphrase one of the mayor's hired guns. The one word answer we're dead certain about is the one we can't write.

The response was to questions about an invitation written for a Feb. 27 money-sucking gathering at the Cedar Grove home of Pepe Garcia, whose maintenance firm Maverick has a good number of contracts in Hudson County. He is the brother of lobbyist and former assemblyman and past Union City mayor Rudy Garcia, whom was a host, along with his brother and fellow lobbyist Paul Bontempo. Rudy is sometimes jokingly called Jersey City Councilman Bill Gaughan's "adopted son."

It seems the invitation to the $1,000-per-person event calls upon people to help finance Mayor Healy's campaign -- with the option of giving unlimited amounts of money to a political action committee (PAC).

On cue, Fulop has called on the state Election Law Enforcement Commission to investigate such a blatant breaking of the law. ELECT probably will take a look, although they said nothing about a probe, but they may do it and announce something long after the election is over. It will not change the results.

This is why Healy people are somewhat sensitive about queries. The response is to say Fulop likes to tell lies and that any money from that event would be returned. Or perhaps it can be given to charity -- like all those charities that benefited from FBI informant Solomon Dwek's donations to the mayor's 2009 campaign. We still don't know what charities.

Rudy Garcia made a number of explanations about the "error" with the invitation that I oversimplified down to a typo.

And to think that the Healy campaign has been trying for months to get everyone to write about Fulop getting funding help in Monmouth County from someone associated with the Republican Party. Ouch.

-- Kearny Mayor Al Santos has announced he is seeking re-election in November with a slate that includes Councilwomen Alexa Arce, 1st Ward, and Carol Jean Doyle, 3rd Ward, as well as 4th Ward Councilman Michael Landy. Town Zoning Board member Richard Konopka is seeking the 2nd Ward seat on the mayor's ticket. The 2nd Ward incumbent, Madeline Peyko, is retiring, Santos said.

Fellow Democrats say that no GOP opponent has surfaced but Santos still is concerned because the enemy is not local but rather Republican Gov. Chris Christie and his 74 percent approval rating.

Santos is aware of how GOP Gov. Tom Kean's victories in the 1980s provided long coattails for others in Kean's party. The Kearny mayor quietly worries that Christie could do the same in his town. After all, the governor came to East Newark to accept the endorsement of Harrison Mayor Ray McDonough, earlier this year. Kearny could be just another piece on Christie's checkerboard.

-- Has anyone talked to Jersey City mayoral hopeful Jerry Walker lately? The Jersey Journal has made calls to the candidate and they have not been returned. We were wondering if things are still kosher between Walker and his at-large council candidate Sterling Waterman, a former school board member. If either Jerry or Sterling could just check in, please do so.

-- It was a packed house at Thursday evening's Hudson County Board of Freeholder's meeting and tempers were a bit frayed over the security at the county administration annex building at 567 Pavonia Ave.

Jersey City Medical Center officials and 100 union members, both sides in contract negotiations, attended. Union members are unhappy and came to the county meeting to voice their displeasure about the pay talks. The freeholders asked both parties to "cool down" and get back to negotiations.

Just before the meeting there was some conflict when some visitors refused to show identification after passing through metal detectors.

At one point, Freeholder Chairman Anthony Romano and Freeholder Bill O'Dea raised their voices at each other. Romano demanded that the Sheriff's officers be allowed to do their jobs but O'Dea said it was pointless to request identification at an open public government meeting and that going through the metal detector and signing a log book would suffice. At one point O'Dea loudly suggested that he and some other freeholders would walk out of the meeting.

Eventually, the occupancy capacity of the freeholder chamber had been met and no one else was allowed to enter. I don't think this is the end of it.

-- One last thing -- who is coming up with this story about an alliance among Healy, Cunningham and Union City Mayor and Sen. Brian Stack? The script writing Oscar already went to Quentin Tarantino. Healy and Stack will never run in the same circles. As Healy backers say about Stack: "How can you trust someone who doesn't even drink wine?"

-- The newest Jersey City council candidates to be certified are Chris Gadsden of Union Street and Jesus Tosado of Kennedy Boulevard, both vying for Ward B. Grace Giron of South Street will run in Ward D.

I'm expecting Imtiaz Syed to run for a Ward C seat. Syed claims to have the signatures. He ran unsuccessfully for one of two at-large council seats in a November 2011 special election. He has the money, so why is he waiting?

-- You know there's an election because Robert Knapp is back praising elected officials in the JJ letters to the editor, me.

-- How's that recall going in West New York? Commissioner Count Wiley wants to dump former runningmates Mayor Felix Roque and Commissioners FiorD?Aliza Frias, Caridad Rodriguez and Ruben Vargas. So far Wiley has waterfront resident Doug Richardson and Rafael Sanchez, pastor of Worship Ministries on his ticket, should voters go along with the recall.

Now all Wiley needs are 5,200 petition signatures for each elected official he wants recall. There must be some North Bergen ex-DPW guys available to assist.

Meanwhile, everyone is waiting for some court activity involving Roque's federal conspiracy charges of hacking a recall website. But it seems at least one of the hacking victims, sometimes called WADO-man, has gone underground. I predict that should all this go to court, this will be one of the county's most entertaining political moments.

-- For you elected officials, I must remind you of an important date this month. It isn't St. Patrick's Day. Just beware that in this political season we're only 13 days from the Ides of March ;)

http://www.nj.com/hudson/voices/index ... y_fulop.html#incart_river