Sacco struggles to deliver votes in Democratic primary

There are signs that the 40-year reign of North Bergen Mayor Nicholas Sacco is nearing an end after a series of losses in last week’s Hudson County Democratic Civil War show a significant decline in his mojo; he once had the ability to deliver massive margins in his North Bergen municipality

The 78-year-old Sacco has been battling health issues in recent months, and there is speculation that he might step down as mayor — but remain as a township commissioner — to designate a successor in advance of the May 2027 non-partisan municipal election without the encumbrance of a special election.

The problem for Sacco is that he’s created no clear succession plan, leaving two of his close allies on the township commission, Hugo Cabrera and Anthony Vainieri, plotting out a fight to become North Bergen’s next mayor.   There are definite factions within the Sacco camp, where the mayor is the only unifying factor; without his involvement, North Bergen becomes Lord of the Flies.

North Bergen has a population of over 63,000, roughly 71% of whom are Hispanic.  Some think Sacco is the last white mayor, and Vainieri, a former county commissioner and Democratic county chairman, has a considerable demographic disadvantage.

The war was between Sacco and Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop on one side, and Union City Mayor/State Sen. Brian P. Stack and Hudson County Executive/Democratic County Chairman Craig Guy on the other side.  Stack and Sacco have never really gotten along; they merely tolerated each other when they served in the State Senate.  Redistricting put North Bergen and Union City in the same legislative district and forced Sacco out of the Senate.

But what escalated a warette into a war was the decision to hire YouTube agitator Leonard Filipowski, aka LeRoy Truth, to harass Stack and his family.  There is now evidence that Filipowski is tied to Sacco.

In the June 10 primary, Sacco and his forces couldn’t produce for their preferred candidates.

Sacco endorsed Fulop for governor, but delivered just a modest 215-vote plurality, 38%-35%, over Mikie Sherrill in North Bergen.  Five-term Sheriff Frank Schillari, a lieutenant in the Sacco machine, won North Bergen by 858 votes, 56%-44%, against the Guy/Stack candidate, Bayonne Mayor Jimmy Davis.  Schillari, sources say, was left in the dark about his campaign tactics and twice threatened to drop out of the race, two sources confirmed to the New Jersey Globe.

The worst news for Sacco came in the 33rd district Assembly race, where his candidates barely won North Bergen: Tony Hector, a landlord who mostly self-funded his race, received 3,627 votes, followed by his running mate, Frank Alonso (3,490).  Businessman Larry Wainstein, who has run against Sacco for township commissioner three times, received 3,476 votes – fourteen behind Alonso, at least according to unofficial numbers.  Assemblyman Gabriel Rodriguez received 3,292 votes in North Bergen.

The Stack-Wainstein alliance appears to have broken out in North Bergen, and potentially positions Wainstein as a mayoral candidate in 2027.

In comparison, Stack’s Union City produced a 6,398-vote margin for Sherrill, who led Fulop, 68%-9%.  Davis won Union City by 5,977 votes, 80%-20%.  In the Assembly race, Rodriguez (8,242) and Wainstein (7,193) won over Hector (1,607) and Alonso (1,504).

Other pieces of the Sacco organization appear to have fallen.

In tiny Guttenberg, it looks like Mayor Wayne Zitt, a longtime Sacco ally, has flipped to Team Stack.  Rodriguez (709) and Wainstein (592) easily outpolled Hector (383) and Alonso (360).   In the race for Sheriff, Davis carried Guttenberg by ten points.  Sherrill beat Fulop in Guttenberg by a 41%-27% margin.

There are signs that Sacco’s grip on Secaucus is waning and that Mayor Michael Gonnelli stayed on the sidelines.  Sherrill carried Secaucus by a 41%-30% margin over Fulop; in the Assembly, the municipality split its vote: Rodriguez (836), Alonso (757), Wainstein (695), and Hector (666).  Schillari won his hometown of Secaucus by a 2-1 margin.

The other Guy/Stack-allied towns – West New York, Weehawken, and Kearny – went heavily for the organization-backed candidates.

Two sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that Vainieri has pushed for North Bergen Democrats to support GOP gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli, purportedly to leapfrog Stack if Republicans win the governor’s race.

The Life and Times of Nick Sacco

When Sacco decided he wanted the 32nd district Senate seat in 1993, two years after he became mayor of North Bergen, he just took it.

The incumbent was Thomas Cowan of the Operating Engineers union, a likeable survivor of Hudson political battles who had spent six years in the Assembly and ten in the Senate.  His political career began in 1977, when a seismic realignment of Jersey City led to the defeats of two State Senators and two Assembly members.

Jersey City Mayor Paul Jordan was challenging Gov. Brendan Byrne in the June Democratic primary.  In May, Thomas F.X. Smith beat Jordan’s hand-picked successor, Bill Macchi, by a 54%-26% margin.  With the Hudson lemmings all currying favor with the new mayor, Jordan’s campaign collapsed, and he dropped out.

Cowan ran for the Assembly in 1977 on a ticket with future Hudson County Executive Robert Janiszewski as part of an organization line put together by Smith before the April filing date, just in case he won.  Under the banner “Regular Democratic Party Against the Income Tax” – a not-too-subtle slap at Byrne – former Assemblyman David Friedland (D-Jersey City) beat incumbent State Sen. Joseph Tumulty (D-Jersey City), with Cowan and Janiszewski ousting incumbents Michael Esposito and Alina Miszkiewicz, both from Jersey City.

After Friedland’s criminal conviction, the 1981 redistricting put Harrison into the 32nd. The State Senator was Frank Rodgers, the long-long-time (48 years) Mayor of Harrison.  Cowan went to the Senate in 1983 when Jersey City Mayor Gerry McCann wanted the Senate seat back. He cut a deal for Rodgers to run for Hudson County Clerk instead.

1983 was a warette year in Hudson: Cowan won the Senate seat by a 58%-42% margin against Jersey City Councilman Anthony Cucci.  (Cucci ran for mayor two years later and took out McCann.)  That was the year McCann dumped Janiszewski and brought in North Bergen Commissioner Anthony Vainieri – the father of Assemblywoman Valerie Huttle and Hudson Freeholder Anthony Vainieri — and former Jersey City Council President Paul Cuprowski.  McCann was on the wrong side of the Mocco Brothers of North Bergen, who backed Cucci and Janiszewski, along with former Assemblyman Theodore DiGiammo (D-North Bergen).   Janiszewski lost renomination to his Assembly seat by 3,000 votes.

Cuprowski and Vainieri were both one-term Assemblymen.  In the 1985 Tom Kean landslide, Republicans Frank Gargiulo – a longtime North Bergen Commissioner and loyal Sacco lieutenant who retired in 2023 – and Charles Catrillo beat the incumbents.

Four years later came the actual Hudson War – a Democratic primary for County Executive between incumbent Ed Clark and challenger Janiszewski – that included full slates for State Senate, Assembly, and Freeholder.  Cowan supported Janiszewski and ran off the line against Cuprowski, the pick of Hudson County Democratic Chairman Dennis Collins – and more importantly, of the Mocco Brothers.  Cowan won, but by just 529 votes.

Republicans believed the War of 1987 and Cowan’s razor-thin primary win might make him vulnerable in the general.  Cowan’s opponent was Catrillo, the freshman Republican Assemblyman, and the NJGOP allocated tremendous financial resources to flip a Hudson State Senate seat for the first time since before Frank Hague.

In the end, it wasn’t close. With the realignment of Hudson loyalties after Janiszewski’s win, Cowan scored a decisive 2-1 victory over Catrillo.   Cowan won 90% in the 1991 Democratic primary and survived a closer-than-expected 57%-39% win over Republican Guy Catrillo (Charlie’s brother) in the Jim Florio Republican landslide.

That was Cowan’s final win.  In 1993, Sacco decided he wanted to be a Senator.

Sacco started in North Bergen politics in 1985 when he was elected to the Board of Commissioners.  Sacco was a 38-year-old public school principal and was taken under the wing of Mayor Leo Gattoni, Sr.

Quick story about Gattoni, who first ran for local office in North Bergen in 1949, in opposition to Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague.  Five years later, while serving as a Hudson County Deputy Sheriff, Gattoni served Hague with a subpoena to appear before a grand jury at a Jersey City funeral home while Hague was attending the wake of his nephew.

Gattoni convinced the Mocco Brothers to put Sacco on the ticket, even though they didn’t really want him.  When a scandal finally took the Mocco Brothers down, Gattoni was persuaded to step aside in 1991 and let Sacco be Mayor.

Using the clout of the North Bergen mayoralty, Sacco forged an alliance with Union City – then-Rep. Bob Menendez and Mayor Bruce Walter, the Hudson County Democratic Chairman – and challenged Cowan for the Senate.  Cowan refused to retire, and Sacco beat him in the Democratic primary by 7,046 votes – 67%-33%.

Last thing: the 32nd district had a bit of a curse associated with it.

Since its creation in 1973, every Senator has eventually left, not exactly on their own terms.  The first Senator, Tumulty (scion of a famous Jersey City political family – his brother was a congressman, and his uncle was Woodrow Wilson’s chief of staff), received just 23% of the vote in the Democratic primary when he ran for re-election.  Friedland, his successor, was removed from office by a federal judge before he faked his death in a scuba diving accident in Bimini.  James Galdieri, the winner of a special election to replace Friedland, lost his seat a few months later when redistricting put another Democratic Senator, Rodgers, in his seat.  (Galdieri was the father of Michael Galdieri, the victim in the Sean Caddle murder-for-hire scheme.)

Rodgers got taken out of the Senate two years later to make room for Cowan.

Sacco walked away from the Senate in 2023 rather than battle Stack in the Democratic primary.