Former Essex County Executive Peter Shapiro, a smart, innovative and skillful politician who challenged the powerful Essex County political machine in stunning upset victories in races for the New Jersey State Assembly at age 23 and for County Executive at age 26, and was the Democratic nominee for Governor in 1985, died today after several years of health issues. He was 71.
Shapiro had become the favorite of Democrats who became involved in politics during the political era that produced Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, and Robert F. Kennedy as presidential candidates. The organization Democrats he challenged played a crucial role in John F. Kennedy carrying New Jersey in 1960 but became nationally identified with Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey.
His election as county executive set off seismic shifts in Essex County politics, causing realignments and rifts that partly exist more than 40 years after the election. One year earlier, Essex County voters approved a charter change referendum that had become a cause for reformers – and Republicans – after Democratic bosses tried to kill a plan to change the way county government operates a few years earlier.
But his career ended after receiving just 29.3% of the vote in his challenge to Republican Gov. Thomas H. Kean – Republicans flipped control of the State Assembly on Kean’s coattails – and then losing his bid for a third term as County Executive to Democrat-turned-Republican Nicholas Amato.
After graduating from Harvard University and serving as an aide to New Jersey Commissioner of Transportation Alan Sagner, Shapiro launched his political career in 1975 as an off-the-line candidate for assemblyman in the 28th district, which includes South Orange, Irvington, and the West Ward of Newark.
He defeated freshman Assemblyman Rocco Neri (D-Irvington) by 183 votes in the Democratic primary, 4,153 to 3,970. The top vote-getter in that race was Patrick Scanlon (D-Newark), who became the organization candidate after incumbent Philip Keegan (D-Newark) decided not to seek re-election to a second term.
Shapiro had gone to Harvard with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who spent time campaigning for his friend in New Jersey. Kennedy went door-to-door in the heavily Irish Vailsburg section of Newark.
He was the easy general election winner, scoring a near 2-1 victory against former Assistant Essex County Prosecutor Paul Daniele and South Orange Republican leader Ruth Margulies.
In 1977, Shapiro won a second term as the top vote-getter in a field of seven candidates in the primary, winning by nearly 7,500 votes.
The debate over changing Essex County’s form of government runs began in 1972 when Kean, the Assembly Speaker, called for the election of a charter study commission.
During Kean’s first year as Speaker, the Legislature passed the Optional County Charter Law, which allowed counties to consider switching from a strong Board of Freeholders to electing a County Executive or creating a County Manager position.
Essex County Democratic boss Harry Lerner opposed any changes. Kean’s idea was quickly panned by the Democratic candidates for freeholder who felt that Republicans didn’t like the way Essex County was trending Democratic.
When a plan to change the form of government was made available to voters, Essex County Democratic Chairman Harry Lerner’s machine went into overdrive to defeat the referendum.
Voters approved the Charter Change by about 7,000 votes, a 53%-47% margin. Shapiro supported Charter Change.
Nearly a dozen Democrats surfaced as potential candidates, including Shapiro, who had considerable support from grassroots reformers and anti-organization Democrats.
Lerner played things close to the vest, declining to endorse a machine candidate early.
Among the Democrats seeking the organization line were: Sheriff John Cryan; County Clerk Nicholas Caputo (aka “The Man with the Golden Arm”); County Supervisor Philip Rotondo, whose job was to be eliminated with the new form of government; and Freeholders Thomas Giblin and Donald Payne, Sr.
Shapiro had two rivals for support of the reformers: Jeanne Graves, co-chair of the Citizens for Charter Change movement and a former president of the Essex County League of Women Voters, and William Brach, the founder of the Brach Eichler law firm and an East Orange councilman in the 1950s who helped spearhead the charter change movement. Shapiro supported the charter change referendum, earning him greater enmity from Lerner.
Early in the year, State Sen. Frank Dodd (R-West Orange), who had served as Senate President in 1974 and 1975, launched a trial balloon saying he was interested in running for County Executive. That never went anywhere.
In late March, there was speculation former Essex County Prosecutor Joseph Lordi would resign as chairman of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission to seek the Democratic nomination for County Executive. Lordi said in a public television interview that he had not closed the door to running.
A few days later, Newark Mayor Kenneth Gibson publicly said he wanted a black man to become Essex’s first County Executive. There had been some discussion of Gibson running himself, but he was encumbered by a May 1978 campaign for re-election to a third term as mayor.
A coalition called Democrats United in Essex was formed to form one slate of opposition candidates to take on the Essex County Democratic organization. At an early April mini-convention attended by more than 1,300 Democrats, Shapiro won a first-ballot victory with more than 60% of the vote against Graves and Brach, who both exited the race.
Lerner and Gov. Brendan Byrne had at some point agreed to jointly back either Giblin or Keegan for the post, but the deal fell through after Lerner was unable to hold the machine coalition together.
That led to Lerner’s resignation in the second week of April. He was succeeded by his longtime vice chair, May Maher.
Maher backed Giblin, a 31-year-old labor leader with a political pedigree—his father, John J. Giblin, had been a Freeholder, State Senator, and chairman of the International Union of Operating Engineers in Washington—and for a short while, Giblin had the organization to run for County Executive.
After Giblin won the screening committee vote, Cryan, Payne, and Rotondo announced they would run anyway. They accused Maher of fixing the vote.
Payne secured the endorsement of Gibson and was in the race to stay.
Samuel Angelo, who had resigned from the Board of Freeholders just weeks earlier to take the post of County Treasurer, also said he would remain in the race. He was viewed as a spoiler for Cryan.
Machine Democrats went into overdrive to avoid dividing their votes by six, which would have virtually assured Shapiro a primary victory.
Giblin, who appeared to have a path to the nomination for a time, dropped out of the race in mid-April after a meeting with Cryan. Caputo and Rotondo found little support among Democratic leaders and withdrew as well.
Cryan received the organization line for a primary against Shapiro, Payne, and Angelo.
Shapiro defeated Cryan by just 2,497 votes in the 1978 Democratic primary, a 35%-32% victory out of 82,544 votes cast.
Shapiro only won slightly more than 1/3 of the votes in the Democratic primary, where 64.6% of voters cast their ballots for one of three candidates who had been part of the Essex Democratic machine.
Born in Ireland, the 49-year-old Cryan – the father of State Sen. Joseph Cryan (D-Union) — served two terms in the State Assembly and unseated a Republican sheriff in 1970. He had the necessary political skills to muscle several other contenders out of the race, but not enough to get them all out.
Donald Payne, Sr., a two-term freeholder from Newark’s South Ward, finished a respectable third in the primary with 26% of the vote. He had hoped a split among Democrats would allow black voters to propel him into the nomination.
With the endorsement of Newark Mayor Kenneth Gibson, Payne won 47.7% of the vote in Newark and 46.3% in East Orange. Of the total votes he received countywide, 81% came from Newark and East Orange. However, Payne was crushed in places like Livingston, where he received 56 votes, and Millburn, where 45 Democrats voted for him.
Even with Payne in the race, Cryan might have prevailed had it not been for Samuel Angelo, a loyal machine soldier for nearly six years as a freeholder. Angelo resigned from the freeholder board to become County Treasurer, a relatively ineffectual position, just a few weeks before he decided to run for County Executive.
Angelo never got his campaign off the ground and won just 5.9% of the vote, but the 4,911 votes he received were nearly twice what Cryan lost.
Speculation that Angelo was just a spoiler who had made some deal with Shapiro never panned out. Angelo was the first top county official Shapiro asked to resign. By 1984, Angelo was a Republican candidate for his old freeholder seat.
Despite his strong showing, Cryan only carried three towns: he won Belleville by 1,376 votes (60%), Bloomfield by 540 (50%), and Fairfield by 58 (56%). Shapiro and Cryan tied in Roseland, with each receiving 142 votes.
He outpolled Shapiro in the two cities Payne won, receiving 4,411 more votes in Newark than Shapiro (30%-16%) and 796 more in East Orange (31%-21%).
Shapiro won the primary by picking up huge pluralities in suburban Essex and Irvington, which he had presented for three years in the State Assembly.
He won 81% in Millburn, 70% in Livingston, 66% in Maplewood and South Orange, 65% in North Caldwell, 64% in West Caldwell, 58% in West Orange, 57% in Glen Ridge, 55% in Montclair, 52% in Caldwell, and 51% in Verona. More than half of Shapiro’s total countywide votes (54%) came from these eleven towns.
Shapiro won Irvington by 611 votes over Cryan, 49%-36%, with Payne taking 11%.
In the general election, Shapiro romped Republican Robert Notte, the executive director of the Newark Redevelopment and Housing Authority, by 41,628 votes, 61%-39%.
Notte came within 199 votes of beating Shapiro in Newark’s North Ward and lost Belleville by just nine votes. He carried 11 of the 22 Essex municipalities: Bloomfield, Caldwell, Cedar Grove, Essex Fells, Fairfield, Glen Ridge, Millburn (by just 232, back when the township was a Republican stronghold), North Caldwell, Nutley, Roseland and West Caldwell.
Shapiro won Newark by 20,963 votes – slightly less than half his total plurality. He too East Orange by 8,193, Irvington by 4,133, Livingston by 745, Maplewood (at the time a solidly Republican town) by 1,294, Montclair by 2,259, Orange by 2,208, South Orange by 1,526, Verona by 442, and West Orange by 3,539.
An independent candidate, Stuart Bronn, received 706 votes countywide.
Shapiro and Cryan split the freeholder seats, each winning four; the other seat went to Pearl Beatty, an ally of Newark Mayor Kenneth Gibson. He became County Executive without his allies holding most seats on the Board of Freeholders.
In 1982, Shapiro had to make a decision: run for a second term as county executive or seek the U.S. Senate seat that opened up after four-term incumbent Harrison Williams was convicted on bribery charges in the Abscam scandal. Shapiro, then 30, decided he wanted the validation of re-election and passed on the race; his decision cleared the way for one of his close allies, Frank Lautenberg, to run.
Shapiro beat Nutley attorney James Troiano by a wide margin in the general election.
He ran for governor in 1985 when Kean was seeking a second term. He defeated State Sen. John Russo (D-Toms River) by 14,416 votes, 32%-27%, with Newark Mayor Kenneth Gibson finishing third with 26%. They were followed by former State Sen. Stephen Wiley (D-Morris Township) with 8.6% and former U.S. Attorney Robert Del Tufo with 6%.
Kean slaughtered Shapiro in the general election, winning by 794,229 votes, 70%-29%. Kean won all 21 counties and lost only Audubon Park (by 35 votes), Chesilhurst (by 20 votes), and Roosevelt (by 27 votes).
Returning to Essex, Shapiro sought a third term as county executive. He dumped Amato, the three-term surrogate from the ticket; Amato switched to the GOP and recruited Newark City Council President Earl Harris to run with him for surrogate. Republicans swept both offices in the general election.