Joseph Doria

Acting Police Director Mark Smith makes his announcement today in Bayonne County Park 

BAYONNE - Good feeling in Bayonne County Park for a vibrant native son who wants to be mayor, belied the fact that they’re gearing up for political war here in this fiscally troubled city.

A hero cop who followed his father into police work and served 25 years on the force, acting Police Director Mark Smith announced his candidacy today, surrounded by family and Hudson County Democratic Organization diehards.

Bayonne mayoral candidate Patrick Conaghan, flanked by councilmen Gary La Pelusa, left, and Anthony Chiappone. 

BAYONNE - Now that retired municipal judge Patrick Conaghan has lunged out of the gate as the first candidate to officially run for mayor in November’s special election, he means to keep an aggressive public schedule.

Both on the trail, and if elected.

"It’s a full-time job," said the 70-year old, lifelong Bayonne resident, referring to the office of mayor. "That was the problem with Mayor Joe Doria. He was in Trenton two days a week, and the inmates were running the asylum."

Having briefly appeased some conservatives, including Sen. Gerald Cardinale (R-Bergen), with his budget address last month, Gov. Jon Corzine’s administration now faces an uprising from the green wing of the state’s progressives, including the New Jersey Sierra Club.

Sandra Bolden Cunningham took her seat in the State Senate todaySandra Bolden Cunningham was sworn in today to serve in the state Senate seat that her husband held until his death in 2004.

"I thank God for giving me the opportunity to fill Glenn's seat,” said Cunningham.

The seat was vacated by Joe Doria, also the former Mayor of Bayonne, who left both offices are being tapped by Gov. Corzine to head the Department of Community Affairs.

Sandra Bolden Cunningham won a Special Election Convention tonight to replace Joseph Doria in State Senate.  Doria resigned to become Acting Commissioner of Community Affairs.

Cunningham will fill the remaining three months of Doria's term.

State Sen. Joe Doria will be the new Commissioner of Community AffairsState Sen. Joseph Doria will be appointed Commissioner of Community Affairs today, according to sources close to Gov. Jon Corzine. Doria will resign from the Senate and as Mayor of Bayonne.

Doria will succeed Susan Bass Levin, who is the new Deputy Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Who wins this district 31 Assembly race in Bayonne comes down to whether voters approve of the general direction here since the city suffered the closure of the Military Ocean Terminal in 2000, or whether the slow rebuilding effort has largely been a bust, overcast by a perception of not enough people-power at the bargaining table.

On that latter side of Broadway Avenue is photographer Anthony Chiappone, a determinedly gadfly Bayonne City Councilman who built a reputation as a government watchdog with his local cable television program before getting into political office himself in the 1990s, jousting with veteran Bayonne Mayor (and state Senator) Joseph Doria, and later allying with maverick Jersey City Mayor Glenn Cunningham.

A few blocks up on the other side of the street stands the rival campaign headquarters of attorney Nicholas Chiaravalloti. A former Doria staffer who came out of Our Lady of the Assumption Parish, filing papers in Doria’s Assembly office as a boy, Chiaravalloti worked his way up in adulthood to become state director for U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez before resigning a month ago to focus on this campaign.