Mayor must come clean, or get lost

Time to come clean

There’s a moment at the end of one of the FBI tapes released last week when FBI informant Solomon Dwek tells Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy that he had donated $10,000 and would be donating another $10,000 in campaign funds to the Healy reelection effort. If you look closely, the mayor leans back and reacts with what looks like a pained grimace.

It’s hard to interpret the mayor’s body language. Sometimes he can look like he’s smiling when he’s really angry at something, yet he can also look really perturbed when he’s just talking about the weather. So, it would be difficult to say with certainty that Healy knew Dwek was suggesting something illegal there. The mayor’s most recent explanation (through a spokesperson) that the $10K was going to be split among nine candidates and would have therefore been legal strikes me as an explanation he might’ve given way back in July.

But, for too long, the mayor has been uncomfortably silent about the corruption scandal that has further besmirched our city’s name. You can’t just say “it’s an ongoing investigation and I can’t comment” forever. That may be prudent jurisprudence, your honor, but it falls way short of what we expect from our political leaders. If you are as disgusted as we are by the corruption this scandal has exposed, (as you should be) then you need to make that clear.

I’m not one to trust the FBI with anything. I haven’t seen the unedited tapes, so I don’t know what was said when Dwek’s button camera wasn’t running. I’ve said all along about this scandal (which also snared one mayoral candidate for whom I did some PR work) that the FBI had to show me the tapes before I joined the chorus calling for the mayor’s political head. What we saw on these tapes might be enough to incriminate former Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini and some others, but I’m not sure it’s enough to indict Healy (or else he would’ve been arrested, right?)

What the tapes do show is that Healy knew that his underlings were dealing with some shady dude from south Jersey. It stretches credibility (to the breaking point) to think that the mayor didn’t know what was going on, but that’s his story (and he’s sticking to it.)

Unfortunately mayor, that’s not enough. I know that Beldini and Councilman Vega, et al. were part of your team and all, but your reaction to their arrests and indictments has been soft, very soft. If I were in your position, and the people around me were caught in this kind of corruption scandal, I would be tossing people overboard without a lifesaver.

When you’re the mayor, you need to show your constituents that you believe corrupt politicians are pigs and have no place in your administration (or on the local legislative body, for that matter.) You need to be loud and obnoxious about it. (I’ve seen you be both.) You need to be ready to sue somebody to get them off the city council. You need to get into a fistfight with the corrupt pigs if they refuse to leave your house.

That’s what a righteously indignant, innocent man does. A leader doesn’t equivocate. He doesn’t wait around to see what comes of all this. He doesn’t hide behind the skirt of “an ongoing investigation.” You get every one of these people into your office and you (figuratively speaking, of course) crack some skulls. Then you need to come outside and show us your bloodied fists. To paraphrase Sean Connery in “the Untouchables”: That’s the Jersey City way!

I’ve known Mayor Healy since he first ran for mayor, against Bret Schundler, back in 1997. He has always seemed to me to be a decent, if slightly befuddling, dude. Only he knows what he’s actually done in all this. What I know is that, as a leader, he is falling way short of what’s expected, and those sometimes annoying demonstrators are right to call him on it. With all the real problems our city is facing (schools, crime, taxes, etc.) we shouldn’t have to be the butt of corruption jokes on top of that.

The mayor should be wearing the crisp, clean coat of an honest man, but his silence and lack of leadership on this is causing a lot of people to believe that he’s sporting the muddy suit of a dirty politician. The time to act is long past due, mayor. The heck with all this innocent until proven guilty crap. This is politics. If you can’t cut the rope that’s tied to the dead weight, you might as well go down with ‘em.