Miguel “Tony” Hector, a former North Bergen school board member, is emerging as a likely candidate for State Assembly in the 33rd legislative district to replace Julio Marenco (D-North Bergen), who announced yesterday that he would not seek re-election.
Hector, a 65-year-old developer and landlord, is a political ally of North Bergen Mayor Nicholas Sacco. He is ready to self-finance a Democratic primary campaign against two candidates backed by Union City Mayor/State Sen. Brian P. Stack: Assemblyman Gabriel Rodriguez (D-West New York) and North Bergen businessman Larry Wainstein.
North Bergen Democrats called an emergency meeting tomorrow night to discuss the next steps following Marenco’s withdrawal from the race. They asked county committee members who had been circulating nominating petitions from Marenco to return them.
There is still no word about a second Assembly candidate. The New Jersey Globe has confirmed that former Assemblywoman Angelica Jimenez (D-West New York) and former West New York Commissioner Cosmo Cirillo had declined an offer to join the Marenco slate.
The recruitment of Wainstein to run against Marenco was a bold move by Stack to begin settling his feud with Sacco, the mayor since 1991. Wainstein also has the ability to self-fund.
Stack and Sacco have never really gotten along: Sacco supported West New York Mayor Sal Vega in a 2007 Senate primary and Stack, running off the line, won the nomination with 77% of the vote. Their relationship hit rock bottom in 2022 when legislative redistricting put the two senators in the same district. Sacco quickly announced that he would end his 30-year tenure in the Senate and reluctantly endorsed Stack.
Sacco’s retirement came with some strings: Marenco, a North Bergen town commissioner and Sacco loyalist, would get one of the Assembly seats; Rodriguez, then serving as mayor of West New York, got the other seat. Two incumbents and Sacco allies, Angelica Jimenez (D-West New York) and Pedro Mejia (D-Secaucus), lost their seats as part of the shuffle.
Wainstein is a longtime Sacco critic who has run against the mayor three times in bids to become the first Hispanic mayor in a town with a 72% Hispanic population. The results were essentially the same in all three races: a 65%- 35% loss in 2015, a 68%- 32% loss in 2019, and a 71%- 29% loss in 2023.