Veteran Ames-Garnes campaigns in the streets of Paterson's 4th Ward

Ward 4 Councilwoman Vera Ames Garnes with supporters, from left, Dwight Sutton, Samuel Groce and Al Barino 

PATERSON - A man on a cellphone behind the wheel of a car with New York plates turns a pair of red eyes toward the formidable-looking woman suddenly shouting at him and jabbing her index finger at him.

"Hey, home boy," bellows Councilwoman Vera Ames-Garnes. "Stay off my streets!"

The man floors it, and seconds later a Paterson patrol car streaks past in another direction.

"They’re going the wrong way," mutters Ames-Garnes, throwing her minivan in gear and tearing after the police. She pulls her vehicle up onto the sidewalk alongside the patrol car where it’s now idling in the middle of the road next to an unmarked car facing the opposite direction.

"Are you looking for that guy?" asks the councilwoman, and gives them the license plate number. The police disappear down the block in pursuit.

"If you don’t belong here, I know you don’t belong here," announces Ames-Garnes, a 23-year veteran of the city council and Paterson native who graduated from John F. Kennedy High School, and went from schoolyard activism as a parent into public life as an elected official.

"That guy was in here looking for someone to buy drugs from," she says with a frown that an instant later disappears as she catches sight of someone smiling and waving at her from the sidewalk.

"Vera!"

"Hey, how ya’ doin’, darling?" The same voice that earlier sent the man’s tires squealing now fills the street with happiness.

Although she garnered fewer than 300 voters when she tried to go citywide in the last mayoral election, Ames-Garnes can’t walk down a sidewalk here in her 4th Ward without people making contact.

On the occasions that they don’t stop, the councilwoman stops them: teases, laughs, touches. This afternoon is no exception as she and two of her allies hang signs throughout her neighborhood six days before Election Day.

This campaign’s a tough one.

In fact, she’s in a brawl compared to 2004 when she ran unopposed. Two 27-year old challengers - Kisha Manning and Wilkin Santana - insist that Ames-Garnes has not hit back hard enough against the gangs. While the councilwoman says she’s street level, her challengers question her apparently high level of comfort with streets that are riven by crime.

"We’ve had five shootings in three weeks," says Manning, vice chair of the board of adjustment. "Many of the residents in this ward - including many seniors - feel like hostages."

Ames-Garnes dismisses her challengers as young and inexperienced, and when she’s referred to their educational backgrounds, she suggests they’re too polished to represent the streets.

"I’m not going to dress up and prance around here like a princess," says the incumbent. "You think Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth came to the fight in business suits with their nails done? It didn’t happen."

Ames-Garnes insists she’s about compassion and community.

Manning gently points out that Ames Garnes’s legendary Day of the Babies school supplies drives and annual trips with Ward 4 children to Disney World, while important, don’t replace a positive legislative record and more aggressive crime fighting and redevelopment measures.

But the councilwoman's extensive contact list built over years gives her what she argues is a special one-on-one ability to connnect people to jobs and services. Out of prison just over two weeks, Samuel Groce, one of her campaign workers hanging signs, says, "I contributed to destroying this neighborhood, and I figure it's my duty to help build it back up. Who better to do that with than Vera Ames?"  

The councilwoman spreads her arms all over the 4th to indicate new housing, and plots of land ready for new projects. But the ward is depressed, and when she describes Carroll Street near the Rising Dove senior housing complex as a wonderful area, joyfully waving to everyone who passes, Manning again protests.

"I don’t think we live in the same ward if she feels that way," says the challenger. "That’s evidence of how out of touch the incumbent is with the needs of the ward. That’s the worst street in the ward."

Manning and Santana both note that Ames-Garnes was indicted for voter fraud in the late 1980s, for registering dead people.

Yet as many residents here are either scared or taxed out of town - Santana himself pays what he describes as a ridiculous $9,000 in taxes, given the conditions - the councilwoman persists in exuberance.

"They wouldn’t know how to live in the belly of the beast," answers Ames-Garnes, who works a beat that includes cops, thugs, wayward young men, and a lot of young single mothers.

"I was having a problem with gangs behind my houses," recalls 4th Ward resident Willie Mae Pearson, who lives near the Inca Apartments. "I called Vera, she spoke to someone, and I didn’t have the problem after that."

Later, the councilwoman heads into the crosswalk on Rosa Parks Boulevard, two blocks from her house. There are a lot of pointed fingers in recognition. Smiles. Waves.

Then, "Vera! Vera!"

She looks up to see grinning faces and raised fists on a city ladder truck as it negotiates a turn from the Boulevard onto Lafayette.

"You see that, even the firefighters like me," exalts Ames-Garnes, a vocal critic of their controversial city contract.

She waves to the city workers and there’s a cheerful horn blast in return.