Tom Giblin

DENVER - Everyone has a favorite Democratic National Convention, and for former State Democratic Party Chairman Ray Durkin and party executive director Emma Byrne, the year was 1988, when Democrats left Atlanta, Georgia with a 17-18 point lead in the polls and fully confident they would buck the GOP.

"The high we got from the convention was huge, and everyone was absolutely convinced we couldn’t lose," recalled Byrne.

"That would change, of course," said Durkin. "That was before we learned that Mike Dukakis was a nice man. He was afraid to attack, and he took a beating."

The year was important for Durkin, the Vailsburg, Newark product who lived in the same neighborhood as other Irish-American party bulwarks: the late John Cryan (father of state chairman, Joe) and Assemblyman (And former State Party Chair) Tom Giblin (D-Montclair).

Steve Adubato, Jr., presides over a meeting between Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo, center, and Sen. Joseph Kyrillos.: Politicker photo 

SPRING LAKE - They drove and were driven to the Irish Riviera from all corners of New Jersey, in cars with government plates on them and dark SUVs and sedans with tinted glass, sporting sunglasses and paunches covered with sports jackets, mostly Democrats and a handful of Republicans, converging on this mansion by the sea.

Congressmen and mayors and assembly people and state senators and opposition researchers and retainers.

Standing at the front of the Seashell Dining Room in the Breakers to greet them was Steve Adubato, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and welcoming smile - and casting an eye that invariably sharpens human activity into the lineaments of political theater.

"I believe in the luck of the Irish," said the executive director of Newark’s North Ward Center and head of the Democratic Party in the North Ward, facing a sun-filled room packed with rivals hunched over plates of eggs and bacon: Gov. Jon Corzine and Republican State Party Chairman Tom Wilson; former Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo, and Assemblyman Albert Coutinho and Assemblwoman Grace Spencer; Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo and Assemblyman Thomas Giblin (D-Montclair).

In this poor man’s Olympiad of Jersey ethnic groups gathered under one roof, Adubato highlighted - as he does annually at this North Ward Center-sponsored breakfast - the Irish, who now number 141,379 registered voters in New Jersey, or 47,514 Democrats, 36,063 Republicans and 57,802 independents.