New Jersey: A New Sense Of Empowerment

From the economy to Iraq to health care, voters in Jersey City and Newark are worried about many issues, and looking for the next President to deliver change.

The Flamingo Restaurant & Bar in Jersey City, where people gathered on their way to vote. | AG / PP

Andrew Garib, NYC Pavement Pieces | Link | Jersey City- It is a strangely joyous, unfamiliar day for the state of New Jersey. Its Giants are football champions, feted in the Canyon of Heroes in Manhattan. And its vote is pivotal to the outcome of Super Tuesday.

New Jersey, with more millionaires than any state in the union, but also with some of the poorest and most crime-ridden neighborhoods in the country, has been overshadowed by the big city across the Hudson in nearly every way. But people in the state sense a change in the dynamic, at least in this election season.

At Exchange Place, part of Jersey City’s booming business district, only minutes from Manhattan, workers on their way to nearby desk jobs and construction sites huddled the other morning around a coffee stand on Hudson and York streets. The talk was about the election, on the main issues of the day, which meant the economy, the war in Iraq and the state of health care in America.

Chris Roes, 32, a carpenter from Middlesex County, says his biggest worry is weakened unions. Rocky Toscano, 55, a construction worker and Democrat from Hopatcong, said Barack Obama would be the best candidate to curb government waste and keep taxes down, while extricating the United States from the quagmire in Iraq. And Eddie Hussaini, 30, from Jersey City, worried about the economic slowdown’s overall effect. “It’ll affect the property you own, the value of your dollar, all of those things,” he said, describing himself a as a conservative Democrat.

At the Flamingo Restaurant & Bar at the corner of Montgomery and Green Streets in Jersey City, as elsewhere, Jerseyans showed considerable passion for health care issues. Joo-yoo Lee, 28, of Jersey City, said she supported the Democrats because of their stance on the issue. “It’s too complicated,” she said. “Whenever you go to the doctor, you have to negotiate first about what’s covered and what’s not covered.”

In many ways, New Jersey is no different from any other place, grappling with a spate of problems, but the voters there feel a particular kind of tension. The state over the last several years, has felt the cycles of prosperity and downturns perhaps more acutely than most other places. Wealthy suburbs abut struggling cities, and the urban areas – such as Jersey City, Newark and Trenton – are undergoing historic restorations, even as their struggles with crime and poor housing continue.

In Newark’s Ironbound district, a working-class poor neighborhood with a large number of immigrants, health care is the number one issue, said Nancy Zak, a community organizer at the Ironbound Community Corporation. Recently, nearby Irvington General Hospital closed its doors after it was found to be unprofitable, Zak said.

Zak introduced Ironbound resident Dorothea Borrigter, 38, a single mother and recent immigrant from Germany who owns her own home patient care business and is herself a nurse. Borrigter lives in Essex County and supports Obama, mainly because he opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning. “The war and the soldiers coming back have made just a big mess for our country,” said Borrigter, a U.S. citizen since 2005.

Borrigter is driven to improve the lives of her two children, Michael, 15, a freshman in Manhattan’s prestigious St. Regis High School, and Kimberly, 8, a third grader at a local school in Newark. She said that Obama, a former community organizer, best captures that spirit of cooperation.

The Ironbound district exemplifies the conflicting fortunes of the state. While it has seen massive investment in the community, it has also absorbed the loss of many of the hospitals in Newark and surrounding communities. Orange Memorial, Patterson, Bennet, and Irvington General have all closed their doors in recent years. Zak said that many of Ironbound’s constituents are inspired by what they see as Obama’s message of hope and transcendent politics, but they have been disappointed before, she said. The district gave Newark Mayor Cory Booker 90 percent of its vote, but, she said, many people have been disappointed by the Mayor’s performance.

In East Rutherford, excitement was high for Obama, where the candidate held a major rally over the weekend in the IZOD Center at the Meadowlands. The crowd at the basketball arena was large, some three to four thousand, but hardly demonstrative. Their cheers seemed muted. Many of the visitors were undecided Democrats who were still shopping for their candidate of choice. Jane Shapiro, 57, of West Orange, said the war in Iraq and the economy were her top issues.

As elsewhere in the country, many of New Jersey’s Obama supporters and volunteers are decidedly young. Wearing an Obama pin, Stacy Moore, 26, of Newark, said that health care was the most important issue. Moore said that her mother was turned down for coverage because tests showed that she may have diabetes, even though the results were inconclusive. Moore also said that a co-worker’s husband who had cancer and who held premium health insurance, was turned down for coverage.

“You should be able to choose what kind of coverage you get,” she said. “Health care right now is totally wrong.”

She said she would carry these thoughts into the voting booth today. End.