HOBOKEN – It's Achilles' heeltime here as the candidates have to ask questions of one another and it’s two against one as Beth Mason fends off two of her chief rivals.
Dawn Zimmer wants to know what issues Mason and her running mates agree on, and Peter Cammarano pursues a similar line, arguing that the councilwoman ditched her self-styled reformer image when she assembled a ticket of old school Hobokenites.
“My slate has been active in Hoboken for quite some time,” answers Mason, who says Raul Morales has spoken out on affordable housing “because we need all levels of income here,” and Anthony Pasquale is strong in the business insurance area.
“The reason I chose my slate is you have to represent all of Hoboken,” she says.
Ryn Melberg grills Cammarano. She says he didn’t go to a Department of Community Affairs (DCA) meeting to provide an alternative budget last year. That disappointed her.
“I didn’t have to appear before the local finance board because my plan was to pass the budget,” says Cammarano. Those who opposed the budget had an obligation to go before the DCA, not Cammarano.
“I didn’t have to explain myself to the State of New Jersey because I voted in favor of the budget,” Cammarano says.
Mason asks Cammarano why he supported Dave Roberts’s budgets four years in a row.
“We were ordered by the State of New Jersey to pass a budget last year,” says Cammarano. “I’m not going to defy an order. I’m not in the business of getting in a game of chicken with the State of New Jersey. I passed a budget every year because that was my responsibility.”
