Hudson County Facts

On NJN TV, State Senator Bernard Kenny blamed Hudson County’s problems on GET NJ and the Urban Times News.

State Senator Bernard Kenny: Mayor misled me on getting weekly to end its attacks

Thursday, September 25, 2003

Letters to the Editor

The Jersey Journal

The “In Our Opinion” column that appeared in the Saturday, Sept. 20 edition of The Jersey Journal calls upon the Hudson County Democratic Party to appoint Mayor Glenn D. Cunningham to the interim 31st District state Senate seat. So long as the cloud of the ELEC laws violations charges hang over his head, it would be wrong to appoint Glenn Cunningham to that position. His appointment would be disrespectful to the people of our county and to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

In the past few years, Hudson County’s reputation has sustained some very bad blows thanks to the illegal behavior of a few of its elected officials. During the recent court proceedings about the June 3 primary election, the improprieties and illegal actions used by Mayor Cunningham’s longtime political operatives and campaign funders were made public. Some have said the mayor did not know of the methods being employed on his behalf during his campaign. In his ruling, Judge D’Italia said it would be disingenuous for anyone to think that the mayor did not know what was going on. When Glenn Cunningham was most recently called upon to disassociate himself from these individuals who circumvented the laws of our state, he dismissed the allegations about their tactics as “minutiae.”

Many of your readers may not know that the chairman of the mayor’s PAC and his election committee is the publisher of the Urban Times. The Urban Times has regularly printed personal attacks on community leaders, families and elected officials who are not Cunningham supporters. They use untrue, inflammatory, vulgar and often racially offensive stories to do so. In spite of this, Mayor Cunningham continues his support for the publication through his continued authorship of a regular editorial column and by allowing a great deal of advertising of City of Jersey City agencies and his own state Senate campaign to be paid for with the taxpayers’ dollars.

Shortly after the June 3 primary election, in an effort to mend fences with Glenn Cunningham and his faction, I reached out and did meet with him. One of the ways I suggested that we could reconcile was for the mayor to end his support and stop using taxpayers’ money to fuel the Urban Times. The mayor assured me that this would happen. In fact, the attacks did not end, they escalated, and the characters of good people continued to be assailed as the paper labeled them pedophiles, Mafia and worse.

As the attacks continued and the mayor did not withdraw his support of the Urban Times, I went back to Glenn Cunningham and again tried to effect a reconciliation. Shortly after that meeting, the Urban Times attacked me and my family. The fact that Glenn Cunningham has not withdrawn his column and continues to allow the people of Jersey City’s money to go towards advertising in the Urban Times is a clear indication that he does not want to reconcile with my colleagues and other community leaders.

Leaders take the moral high ground at all times – even when it means distancing yourself from longtime associates who act unscrupulously. I have seen this in my colleagues in Hudson County and Trenton. To expect that we would send anyone less to Trenton would be wrong.

BERNARD KENNY, N.J. SENATOR AND CHAIRMAN OF THE HUDSON COUNTY DEMOCRATIC ORGANIZATION Hudson County