With Hackett finally out of the way, Brown tries for a third time

Betty Brown and Orange Police Sgt. Kerry Coley.

She wishes she could have been the one to vanquish Mims Hackett.

But while other politicians were either lining up behind him, or still in college, or getting steam-rolled in Senate campaigns against Dick Codey, activist Betty Brown was challenging Hackett head-on.

Twice.

Though she lost in her bids for mayor - first in 2000 and then in the 2004 rematch - she was out there, and now in the wake of Hackett’s meltdown, Brown believes voters will turn to her as Orange’s rightful, battle-tested successor.

"If they had elected me we wouldn’t have the problems we have had with Hackett," says Brown, a 21-year resident of the city. "We wouldn’t have had the ethics issues."

A past member of the planning board, the polished Brown offers education and experience as complements to what she sees as her moral leverage for having opposed the mayor in his heyday.

Holder of two Master’s degrees, Brown worked as a project manager at AT&T for small business systems before occupying her current job servicing customer complaints for Essex County.

She says as mayor she would focus on improving educational opportunities by fielding the best Board of Education candidates, and stabilizing taxes by fostering commercial development.

"More than 650 properties up for tax sale today," bemoans Brown, who lives in the South Ward. "That’s more than 10% of the city’s residences."

The big money candidate in the race, police officer/realtor Eldridge Hawkins; and the likely frontrunner, Donald Page, do not have resumes as well-appointed as Brown’s, the candidate argues.

"When I look at Eldridge Hawkins’s background, I think it’s deficient," she says. "He’s only been on the West Orange Police Department for four years. And he does not understand the language of business. Selling homes doesn’t mean you know how to run a city. He’s a nice young man, but he’s not ready."

Brown admits she entered the race late this year - on Feb. 12. She doesn’t have the money in this cycle she commanded in the past, and the public declaration of support she received from Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo is absent this year. DiVincenzo is staying neutral in the Orange mayoral election, according to his chief of staff Phil Alagia.

Slowed by bad legs, she is not the door-to-door campaigner she wishes she could be as she faces the home stretch of this campaign.

But Brown hopes outrage coupled with memory combine to compensate.