I’m new to living in Hudson County, but I must say I’m impressed by the well-greased machine of sleaze they have built here in Jersey City after attending my first meeting of the city council on Wednesday.
It came one day after Councilwoman Amy DeGise, part of the political royal family here, was found guilty of smashing her SUV into a bicyclist who had passed a red light in July, sending him careening off her windshield and flipping through the air, and fleeing the scene. A video shows that she didn’t even tap the brakes to see if the guy was bleeding from his ears. She sped away while he was still on the ground.
DeGise waited six hours before showing up at police headquarters. They had a recording of the crash, and saw her license plate, so they already knew it was her. But they didn’t go get her during those hours. Nor did they conduct any kind of sobriety test. Mayor Steve Fulop’s office says that’s standard procedure and reflects no favoritism at all. Hmmm.
“That’s the number one speculation,” says Kevin Bing, an activist who gathered petitions on the street and attended Wednesday’s meeting. “Were there drugs or alcohol in her system?”
I’m not saying the woman was intoxicated, mind you. She denies that, and there is no evidence of drugs or alcohol. Which is the point. If a drunk driver flees the scene, and then waits six hours, the liver and kidneys do their work destroying the evidence. And when police sit on their hands and let that happen, no one’s the wiser.
“It’s such ego and hubris,” says Megan Carolan, who started the online petition. “Many people who signed the petition said that if this happened to them, they’d be in handcuffs.”
On Wednesday night, after DeGise had been ditching me for weeks, I went to a council meeting and signed up to speak as a citizen of this great city. I identified myself as a journalist and asked her flat-out: Why didn’t you stop? Why did you wait six hours? Do you think it’s reasonable for people to suspect you may have been under the influence of alcohol or drugs?
She gave no answer, just nodded vaguely. I talked to her lawyer, and her political spokesperson, and got nothing more. The strategy is to stonewall.
This is the ugly side of machine politics. DeGise and her allies know the local machines control enough votes to protect them. She knows she doesn’t have to answer these basic questions -- not from the 7,500 people who signed Carolan’s petition, not from the demonstrators who are gearing up for yet another protest next week, and certainly not from pesky journalists.
She is the former county chair, a key player in deciding who gets what political job. New Jersey gives these party machines special powers to design ballots so that the local players like DeGise and Fulop line up as a team under the party’s preferred candidates for higher office, from Joe Biden and Cory Booker on down. The machines also supply volunteers and raise money, often from secret donors, making it tough for outsiders to break in.
DeGise sits in the inner sanctum of the Hudson machine, one of the most powerful in the state. Not only was she chair, her father, Tom DeGise, is the county executive, and he won’t say a word either. The mayor, a likely candidate for governor who is going to need the support of the machine, is making no waves. And while two members of the city council have demanded her resignation, the other seven aren’t making a peep. (I asked them if the guilty verdict changed their minds and got the same blank stares.)
After the July crash, other evidence emerged showing that DeGise lives in the machine’s protective bubble. A Hoboken police video from 2019 shows her trying to intimidate an officer from ordering her illegally parked car towed, telling the cop she’s calling the mayor’s office. The car’s registration, it turns out, had expired two years before. And in court last week, her attorney conceded that she had failed to pay multiple parking tickets. Her wages were garnished at one point after she neglected to pay a $3,000 bill at an animal hospital.
The rules, it seems, are for little people.
The only happy twist in this story is that the bicyclist, Andrew Black, miraculously bounced up after his acrobatic flight with only minor injuries, and that DeGise lost her license for a year, and must pay a fine of $5,000.
He’s taken initial steps to sue the city. Here’s hoping he wins.
More: Tom Moran columns
Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com or (973) 986-6951. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
Ad Choices