In Hudson County, at a certain point it will become easier to erect iconic stone tablets in place of actual candidates. They’re almost at that point now, not that it’s too different from the rest of the country. The establishment dominates while the purveyors of anarchy end up on skid row – or behind bars, or just increasingly eccentric.

It wasn’t always like this.

Honest.

For years, Hudson used elections to stay sharp.

Even a guy on a unicycle with bad intentions presented the organizers in power with an opportunity to look alert.

As recently as 2007, a “war” (pardon the quotes, but that’s probably the word Brian P. Stack would use to describe his Democratic Party Primary annihilation of Silverio “Sal” Vega to win Bernie Kenny’s senate seat) gave more than just campaign practice to budding operatives. It put Stack in power and announced to Hudson and the state that long-serving lion state Senator Nick Sacco (D-32) could no longer serve as the solitary purveyor of North Hudson power. I remember hearing Stack giving his victory speech at the front of a room (I would describe it as “packed,” but it wasn’t really, it was more like a solid block of matter that could only later, in the pried-apart aftermath of the event, be identified as human beings) and thinking that me made a reference to his allies receiving “powder burns.” He didn’t. It was just the way he said the word “Guttenberg” in the raucous surroundings and the overriding sensation of battle frenzy, that made it seem like a natural fit to his speech. “We fought so hard we received powder burns.”

At the time, it really did feel like a revolution…

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