Gerald McCann was mayor of Jersey City from 1981 to 1985, and lost a re-election bid in 1985 to a former friend, Anthony Cucci. He ran again in 1989. Stapinski covered the election for the Jersey Journal.
I was assigned to follow one of the front-runners, a black guy who made it into a runoff election with McCann. Glenn Cunningham was a former cop, a decent, honest man who had been a city councilman for years.
He didn't stand a chance.
At one political debate, Cunningham questioned McCann about his lavish lifestyle. McCann lived in Jersey City's most exclusive waterfront development, Port Liberte, which was so close to Lady Liberty that McCann could stick his head out his window and practically kiss her ass. It was a gated community built along canals that separated one cluster of pastel-colored homes from another, which give it the nickname Venice on the Hudson. It even had its own private ferry to Manhattan. Since he had enough money to live in a place like that, everyone at The Jersey Journal suspected that McCann was somehow on the take.
When Cunningham suggested that McCann was up to no good, the audience at the mayoral debate applauded McCann, not Cunningham, and shouted "good for him." Why shouldn't McCann steal money and live in Port Liberte if he could? It was only natural. He should take what he could get while the gettin' was good. It was because of people like them that McCann was elected to a second term.
At first I thought the only explanation for McCann's was that voters, overwhelmed with the number of choices, went with the most familiar Irish face, that there was no way a black man was going to get into office. I blamed racism. But now I think their decision was even more stupid than that: Jersey City's voters missed being abused. It didn't feel like home without a criminal in office.
- Helene Stapinski, Five-Finger Discount, pp.202-3
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