Not since 1999 going into 2001 have we seen such a political shift.
While Guttenberg will likely elect Councilman Gerald Drasheff as its next mayor - since he has the support of a strong Democratic organization there - less certain are the fates of mayoral posts in Bayonne or Jersey City.
While Bayonne voters will get to choose their mayor at a special election on Nov. 4, Jersey City residents are awaiting the outcome of a court challenge against Mayor Jerramiah Healy, who is up for re-election in May.
Former Assemblyman Louis Manzo, a contender for Healy's seat, has asked the court to remove Healy based on Healy's conviction for a confrontation with police officers in Bradley Beach. Are the charges serious enough to remove Healy? Will any judge make a ruling that will help Manzo himself become mayor?
Too close to call in Bayonne
The five-way race in Bayonne seems to have two frontrunners: Patrick Conaghan and Mark Smith.
But as in horse racing, this race will likely be won by a nose.
Conaghan is desperately trying to tie Smith to the previous administration of Joseph Doria, while Smith tries to sell the public the concept that he is his own man.
Even the most ardent Smith supporters are a little uncertain, largely because Nov. 4 is also a presidential election, meaning much higher voter turnout. That makes all normal predictions for outcome unreliable.
Worse, many people are angry and scared about the culture of greed in the mortgage industry that has left many retirement accounts at risk. How these voters express their frustration is anybody's guess.
Race also plays a significant role in the election, since an African-American is at the top of the Democratic ticket for president this year.
In the past, Bayonne voters struggled over race. One Democratic insider said selling Barack Obama to Bayonne voters is a problem. Yet, as attractive as Republican John McCain is, his poor choice for a vice presidential candidate as well as some self-destructive campaign moments make him no easy choice either.
Since many of the same Democrats who are supposedly in charge of the Obama campaign in Bayonne also are supporting Smith, they could see a backlash against Smith by voters who might not want to support Obama.
While the race is too close to call, Conaghan appears to have some advantages. He, Robert Sloan, Richard Rutkowski, and Raymond Rokicki will draw votes from the Obama camp, partly because each falls into Obama's theme for change. Conaghan's sales pitch of fiscal responsibility will also draw many Republican votes. Anger at high taxes will also generate votes for Conaghan even from people who normally vote only once every four years.
The freeholder races
Of the nine freeholders facing re-election in Hudson County on Nov. 4, only Democratic incumbent Freeholder Doreen DiDomenico faces a real challenge in Denis Wilbeck, and as with Smith, her fate rests on an unpredictable an angry electorate.
In Guttenberg, Drasheff will likely ride out this voter dissatisfaction partly because he can be perceived as an agent of change as well as someone who works within the system. This hurts the campaigns of Hernando Alvarado and Vasilios Scoullos, both of whom need to harness the public outrage to overcome the benefit Drasheff enjoys from the Democratic machine support.
Capitalizing on misery? In Bayonne, some critics of former Mayor Doria - who now serves as the commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs - are quietly chuckling over the recent order for Hoboken to raise taxes over its next two quarters.
"It's taken Doria three months to do [for Hoboken] what he took 10 years to do in Bayonne," the joke goes.
This goes to the fact that both Bayonne and Hoboken both defaulted on their municipal budgets. But some believe that because Doria was mayor of Bayonne and developed the budgets here, Bayonne got three to five years to catch up, while Hoboken taxpayers must foot the increase in two tax quarters.
For Hoboken taxpayers, this is a double whammy, since crisis on Wall Street is likely to leave many people unemployed at the same time they are being hit with a massive tax increase.
For various political factions, the problem is how to spin it so as to shift the blame to someone else and somehow get a political benefit from taxpayers' misery without making it obvious that they are doing so.
So nobody is going to directly come out and say "I told you so," although the urge - like the urge for sweets - is almost overwhelming.
The fact is that there is more than enough blame to go around. And although it was a City Council vote in late spring that unleashed the disaster, this year's budget problems in Hoboken can't be blamed on any recent event, and not even on Doria.
But you can bet that voters next spring will come to the polls with a vengeance after being hit with the massive increase in the months just prior to the Hoboken mayoral election. And they might just be thinking about the old political adage, "throw all the bums out."
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