Betty Brown

ORANGE - Newark Mayor Cory Booker todayNewark Mayor Cory Booker lent his public support to the mayoral candidacy of Eldridge Hawkins, Jr.

"I know what it takes to restore hope and a new direction to a city in crisis," Booker wrote in a message to Orange voters that appeared on Hawkins campaign mailers throughout the Essex County city on the eve of the last weekend before Election Day.

"Eldridge Hawkins has the competence, good ideas and determination to create a bright future for Orange," Booker wrote of the 28-year old West Orange police officer.

ORANGE - On the last full week of the mayor's race here, At LargeAt Large Councilman Donald Page Councilman Donald Page and West Orange Patrolman Eldridge Hawkins lead the pack in overall financial contributions and have opened up on each other in a mail war.

According to the state Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC), Hawkins has raised $67,395, including $25,273 in the last period, leaving him with $19,146 in the bank.

Page has raised $41,148, including $11,210 in this period. He has aEldridge Hawkins, Jr. closing balance of $5,416, according to ELEC.

The Hawkins campaign did a lit. drop early this week that charges the councilman with racking up $21,000 of travel expenses over the years he has been in office, while the Page campaign blasted away at Hawkins’s short time as an Orange resident, noting that he voted in his first election here in June of last year.

ORANGE - The city at its summit straddles a ridge in the western hill country of Essex County, where affordable housing high-rises loom over residential twoPlanning Board chairman Dwight Holmes and his wife, Beverly. and three stories and churches, the public library, the Elks Lodge and Main Street, packed into 2.2-square miles with an elevated train track cutting along the edge of the valley and Highway 280 splitting the city in half.

Orange lost its once formidable industrial base on the south side over four decades ago, and now it’s trying to shake off the after-effects of its mayor’s tumble from power.

None of Mims Hackett’s would-be successors disagrees that the Abbott District town needs redevelopment, and all six of them are willing to work with the Berg Development Corporation, its partners and other developers to see the fruition of commercial and residential projects.

At Large Councilman Donald Page 

ORANGE - The foes of At-Large Councilman Donald Page say he’s a chronic naysayer and grandstander, the kind of councilman who’s been so determinedly anti-administration that if he gains the executive’s chair himself he will short circuit for lack of knowing any role other than agitating underdog.

"Page is a no-vote on the city council," says Tency Eason supporter William Hathaway. "Every time he votes, he votes no. He’s there to bring a negative vibe to Orange."

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.

Eldridge Hawkins, Jr. 

ORANGE - Midway into a mayoral candidates’ forum in a senior housing facility in the North Ward, an elegant, bearded man walks briskly to the front of the room and occupies a chair almost directly in front of At Large Councilman Donald Page.

Conspicuously seated apart from the rest of the audience, the man studies closely the politician widely viewed as the frontrunner in the race.

Zoning Board Chair Janice Morrell

ORANGE - Long serving zoning board chair Janice Morrell has a circle of supporters who follow those meetings, and who swear that in terms of integrity and preparation, she is unmatched among the field of mayoral candidates.

A retired director of minority affairs at Rutgers University, Morrell works by the book, particularly when it comes to Orange development projects. Even someone’s off-handed remark about the state Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) exacting measures in overseeing the remediation of the Berg Hat Factory produces a stern gaze from Morrell.

North Ward Concilwoman Tency Eason 

ORANGE - If Donald Page can boast that he’s the candidate in the race who has most actively opposed Mayor Mims Hackett, North Ward Councilwoman Tency Eason is the only person who can rightfully argue that she has already defeated Page.

When she challenged the sitting North Ward councilman with Hackett’s blessing in 2002, she beat him by ten votes.

Eldridge Hawkins, Jr. 

ORANGE - There are no smiles cast across a cold ten feet of space where North Ward Councilwoman Tency Eason faces her rival At-Large Councilman Donald Page as the City Council considers giving the Berg Development Corp. a 20-year tax abatement to redevelop and occupy the old Berg Hat Factory in the valley.

The project was supposed to be completed in January, or a few months after Mayor Mims Hackett marched into federal court in handcuffs on a charge of taking a $5,000 bribe from a phoney insurance contractor.

But the old building with broken windows still juts over the neighborhood and question marks abound about the status of that project and others meant to kick-start this city at the edge of gangland crisis, and now staggered by the Hackett scandal.

"It’s been six years and no major projects are finished," resident Shirley Hendricks reminds the council. "At least five to six buildings should be done over there."

Another resident, Harold Johnson, wants to know if the city has planned appropriately for the impact of 600 condo units - 500 in the historic Valley section, and 100 on Main Street.

"We’re hoping they’re empty nesters," frets Johnson.

The candidates running for mayor in Orange are schedule toOrange Councilman Donald Page participate in a forum Thursday sponsored by the Rev. Reginald Jackson at St. Matthew’s AME Church.

Local clergy members will pose questions to the six invited candidates at the event, which begins at 7 p.m.

At-Large Councilman Donald Page plans to attend the forum.

"It’s a legitimate debate," said Page spokesman Michael Vieira.