BELLEVILLE – “Gritty” might be a generous adjective to describe a place where a windy day could mean getting slapped in the face with a piece of trash, and yet there’s still some rickety effort at civilization in Essex County’s Belleville, scene of a May 8^th Mayoral Contest.

At a Saturday morning book sale in the local public library, a yellowed, ragged Clive Cussler novel appears wedged between bound legal volumes and Encyclopedia Brown soft covers. It’s for sale, arguably giving evidence of something. To be fair, the town struggles (or doesn’t) to get out from underneath whatever influence Newark has at any given time, inevitably living with the consequences of being the little neglected brother of New Jersey’s terminally ill-disposed bad boy.

Mount Prospect spills northward out of Brick City’s North Ward until it gets truncated on Mill Street, which staggers up to Belleville Avenue. Hook a right and eventually you end up on a Town Hall-anchored Washington Avenue overcrowded with names like Dollar Store, Dirty Laundry and Popeyes. The flag of Ireland flaps frantically in the breeze in front of that centrally organizing monolith housing local government. A bust of Christopher Columbus adorns the sidewalk. Houses that look shoveled on top of one another with cement that barely dried before they went live rise over the shoulders of Town Hall just across the river in the scrap of Bergen crunched between Essex and Hudson.

Mayor here since 2006, Ray Kimble wants a fourth term, and has some heft on his side as he eyes May

8^th Election Day. He’s a former police chief and former town manager. His campaign lit burnish those biographical pieces as evidence of local statesmanship. He also has the on-paper usually high-five inducing incumbent’s leg up of – not one – but two challengers in the contest; in this case, former Councilman Michael Melham and School Board Trustee Liza Lopez.

But will this be the year Belleville breaks out of the old mold?

That’s the question on the streets.

Home to a dedicated band of white ethnics roughly very chopped between those visible emblems outside Town Hall, Belleville steps constantly at the edges of recognizing its exploding Hispanic population. Ten years ago, Elvin Pereira, a Newark North Ward transplant, and the late P.J. Mac Donald, a Belleville diehard, waged one of the all-time local contests, with the former careful to acknowledge his Irish American fiancé, and the latter noting – with pride – his Hispanic niece. Mac Donald barely won, using labor muscle to turn back Pereira and reminding voters that if they went with the Steve Adubato acolyte they might as well vote to replace Belleville Town Hall with the North Ward Center.

Kimble stood with Mac Donald back then, and has since twice won reelection.

In 2013, a year ahead of his own race, the mayor backed the reelection of Republican Governor Chris Christie, partly to stop-gap that part of his politics that never lined up neatly with powerful Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo, another North Ward Center political creation. The executive was a big Christie ally. Kimble backing Christie probably ensured that the organization wouldn’t send another Elvin Pereira up to his backyard to campaign against him. It delayed Belleville’s utter submission to becoming a satellite of Adubato World.

But it didn’t remove the inevitable bubbling up of local politics.

An attorney who comes to the dance without the North Ward Center connection, Lopez wants better communication between the schools and Town Hall, not only to obviously bolster the future of the children, but to improve a somewhat down on its heels town where people everywhere on the campaign trail tell her they’re at the verge of pulling out of Belleville.  

“As a trustee of the Belleville School Board I have had an inside look at the neglect of the schools,” Lopez told InsiderNJ. She noted a $48.3 million bond referendum to fix nine school buildings in town. “In order for those projects to go through, you need a healthy, symbiotic relationship between the town and the schools.”

Lopez’s father bought his Belleville home when Lopez was 18. The mayoral candidate grew up in New York City. She went to school in Puerto Rico, and worked as a community organizer in the South Bronx. She received her Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology and moved into town when she was going to law school. She served as associate counsel to the Newark public schools.

She’s running an animated grassroots campaign. She has some connective tissue to Pablo Fonseca, the-operative formerly known as Chief-of-Staff to Senator (then-Newark Mayor) Cory Booker. 

On Saturday, InsiderNJ observed happily deployed sidewalk-marching Lopez Campaign volunteers in maroon t-shirts.

“We’re pounding the pavement and letting people know they have an option,” said Lopez. “I want to make people’s lives better, and as part of that we need to revitalize Washington Avenue. We’ve knocked on over 10,000 doors, and we hear the same things repeatedly. Property taxes are egregious and people are thinking about leaving.”

They’re playing in part on national Trump moods dopplegangered locally.

Kevin Kennedy, a councilman on the ticket with Kimble, has posted some infamously inflammatory statements on Facebook, at one point referring to U.S. Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Walters as “these two bitches… auditioning for Saturday Night Live.” At least one close Kimble confidant told the mayor he had to pull the plug on Kennedy, but he didn’t. For all his loathsome social media predilections, Kennedy’s a good politician, who’s the first person to show up with a card of condolence or that concerned phone call when someone in a political circle is up against it. Amid catcalls, Kennedy’s running for reelection with Kimble.

“He constantly makes disparaging remarks,” Lopez said of Kennedy. “I don’t understand that. As an elected official you have to be sensitive to all members in your community. As I’ve knocked on doors I’ve talked to every walk of life – African Americans, senior citizens, South Asians. Everyone expresses a similar sentiment, which is they say yes to change. That is the general sentiment.”  

Then there’s Melham.

The other challenger runs a company called AlphaDog, which holds 20+ government contracts for municipal communications, and builds campaign and election software. His 6,000 sq/ft commercial building, adjacent to Town Hall, located in the heart of Belleville’s main thoroughfare, Washington Avenue, remains unfinished and deteriorating, a case of political retaliation, according to the mayoral candidate.

In 2015, Melham filed a federal lawsuit against the Township, which, in part, alleged the Township Manager was holding his position illegally. As a result of the evidence presented, multiple government agencies immediately stepped in and asked for the Manager’s reluctantly provided resignation.

“They say you can’t fight City Hall. I not only fought City Hall, but took on the Township Manager, Township Attorney and several members of the governing body at the same time, and so far, I’ve won,” Melham said at his kickoff last year. “I plan on using that same vigor to fight for every taxpayer and resident who feels they don’t have a voice. I will stand up for them, the same way I stood up for myself.

“My building is literally a microcosm of everything wrong with Belleville,” he added, referring specifically to the near-collapse of Washington Avenue. “From the lack of leadership and vision, to old-school mindsets, to the way current elected officials use their positions to settle personal and political vendettas. It’s over. I believe in a Better Belleville, that’s why I want to be Mayor.”

In a three-way contest with no runoff election, one source said he believes Lopez has a clear shot, with the two white males dividing the vote and allowing the attorney to ride fast-emerging demographic advantages. But Melham has poured real money into the contest: $24,000 according to his state Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC) report on hand in January. He’s running a real vote-by-mail effort to squeeze our every conceivable loose change vote. There’s also the fact that Kimble – who should have the fortification of Town Hall in his corner at the very least – this year lacks the services of a jammed-up Richard Yanuzzi, a local Boss Tweed-like figure and Steve Adubato-of-Belleville candidate who for years got the vote out for his Town Hall pal. But Kimble still has more money than Melham – $41,000, according to his last ELEC report.

Kimble could not be reached for comment.

Having warred with him, made up with him, then endured the rank public displays of social media candor by Kimble cohorts, DiVincenzo, state Senator M. Teresa Ruiz (D-29) and Essex County Democratic Committee Chairman Leroy Jones are staying out of the trenches here, letting Kimble fight his own wars and probably trusting – in Ruiz’s home district – in a status quo result, so that they can eventually put more commanding fingerprints on whomever next occupies Town Hall.

Grassroots creations, Melham and Lopez lack that connective tissue to the establishment.

But, in the words of one insider, if the winner isn’t Kimble, that person can expect a personal visit by the county powers that be at some point, and the proffered hand of an Essex-wide family otherwise known as the Democratic Party.