Page leads charge of post-Hackett hopefuls in Orange

Orange Councilman Donald Page

Orange Mayor Mims Hackett appeared in council chambers, among the first public officials to arrive, smiling broadly at the young baseball players and haggard clutch of City Hall gadflies alike.

"Happy New Year," he said, and proceeded to wade into the small crowd with a polished politician’s outstretched hand. A month away from standing trial to answer to corruption charges and already deposed from his office as 27th district assemblyman, Hackett carried no aura of the disgraced Roman senator on Wednesday evening. He was all dapper southern sweetness and light.

More bundled bodies floated in from the cold and by now Hackett was at the front of the room.

There would be a special presentation of the recreation league baseball team and the mayor smiled with the news and straightened in his chair. "These talented youngsters are an inspiration to everyone," he beamed, and proceeded to slowly read a full roster of the team’s players.

"May their future success be unlimited," said Hackett. Even the most weathered and cynical faces couldn’t resist sharing the proud moment for Orange, and coming around the dais, Hackett was in the middle of it, hovering as they arranged players and coaches, sauntering forward and posing to complete the happy group picture as cameras clicked.

In the wake of the U.S. Attorney’s charge last fall that he took a $5,000 bribe to deliver an insurance contract, Hackett claimed innocence and in this same council chamber announced that he would be running for mayor again in 2008. But the talk now is he’s planning a fadeout. Whether he continues managing a city that’s broke, or goes or is forced to go - candidates are lining up to succeed him. Most visible is Councilman Donald Page, but community activist Betty Brown, lifelong resident Dwight Holmes, and Lou Childress are other names that repeatedly surface.

On Wednesday, 28-year old West Orange Policeman Eldridge Hawkins, Jr., son of former state Assemblyman Eldridge Hawkins, confirmed rumors that he would run.

"Much of the problems in Orange stem from the dynamics between subgroups whether they be political or ethnic," said Hawkins in a news release in anticipation of his formal announcement this Saturday at the Elks Lodge. "There are many political factions whose personal ambitions have interfered with the advancement of the city’s development. Orange’s rich cultural diversity has not been embraced. Under my administration, there will be unification through understanding and compromise for a better Orange."

If Hackett exits, who he’ll support to run the government in his absence is a question mark at the moment. In the meantime, his nemesis of the last few years, Page has the bully pulpit of office as he positions himself for the election on May 13th. It’s an advantageous place he has in the public spotlight, particularly since his colleague and fellow Hackett detractor, Councilman Ed Marable, Jr., won’t run for mayor this year.

Councilman Ed Marable, Jr.

Observing the baseball celebration scene at Wednesday night’s council meeting, Marable and Page remained solemn-faced as Hackett worked the crowd. When the celebration was finally over, Page impatiently turned to what he saw as the pressing matter of 132 Williams Street, a senior housing complex where two elevators were broken through the holiday season.

Page argued that $700 the city extracted from the building’s owner, New Community, was not nearly enough to show Orange’s commitment to seniors living in adverse conditions. He said $5,000 would be a more appropriate fine.

"As a council and as a city, we should be on the side of our seniors," said Page. "They don’t have any help from the people they elect."

Now wearing reading glasses at the head of the room in his chair next to Council President Lisa Perkins, Hackett was buried in his own paperwork, seemingly oblivious to Page’s impassioned remarks.

"In closing," Page was saying, "what the council needs to do is pay more attention to our seniors. We ask them to vote for us, and we have to be there for them. Our code enforcement has to be more realistic when they do fines for those buildings, an take into account the suffering of those seniors."

Two elderly women in the front row, one of whom later identified herself as a resident of 132 Williams Street, clapped with the sound of Page’s words.

Hackett went on reading.

Later in the meeting, Page defended his resolution authorizing the Orange Police Department to receive the assistance of the New Jersey State Police to combat crime.

The city’s police director, Eric Webster, was standing in befuddlement at the microphone.

"I don’t understand what the purpose of the resolution is," Webster said. "I was never consulted. I see no need for state police in the City of Orange. If we have state police, it will lower morale."

"I respect the police," said Page. "But there are some parts of the police department that need to be criticized. There are drug deals going down, and you don’t see the police driving by and actually arresting people."

When Perkins called for someone to second the motion to advance the resolution behind Page’s vigorous affirmation, the council was silent and the resolution died.

As is his habit, Hackett ducked the public comment portion of the meeting, but his longtime ally, Perkins, wasn’t about to let Page escape without a rebuke. She noted that 132 Williams Street is in the East Ward, her ward.Council President Lisa Perkins

"We as a council won’t be able to correct anything if we don’t know anything," she told the public. "Tell your friends about me. Don’t reach out to someone because you like their antics. Don’t form an opinion of me if you don’t know me. I’m not here for mayor of ’08. ...We need to get up off these attitudes and these innuendos."

The council members don’t get along, she admitted. But at least they should be courteous to one another and not grandstand.

It was a tough speech, and the mood was a long way from the baseball cheerfulness of earlier, but then the room was occupied at the moment not by children, but by the council’s grimmest critics: downtown merchants complaining about surcharges, and residents of public housing sleeping on mattresses filled with bedbugs, and seniors living in a building with no working elevators and patrons of a library with more than $11 million in cost needs.

Having left before the beginning of the regular meeting, the proud 12-year old players were gone for the evening, and so was Hackett.

According to Essex County Clerk Chris Durkin, March 20th is the filing deadline for May 13th municipal elections. The towns with elections are Belleville, Irvington, Montclair, Nutley, West Orange, and Orange.