From the Bergen Record (comments below):
Big spender shakes up small town
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
By ADAM LISBERG
STAFF WRITER
Donald Nuckel is loud, rich, and angry. So is his campaign for mayor of Little Ferry.
The race has been peppered with bitter accusations, which is not necessarily out of character for a local contest in North Jersey. What really makes this election different is the money.
Nuckel has poured at least $162,000 into his first-ever bid for elected office. He has plastered the borough with accusations about his opponents, bought meals for senior citizens, and treated residents to a clambake and an Oktoberfest party.
In a blue-collar town of 10,000 residents, no one has seen a campaign like this.
"People say to us, why are you doing it?" Nuckel said, his voice booming and his fist pounding on a table in his office. "Yes, we have a big financial commitment. But we also live here and we have a responsibility to try to help!"
There are 5,058 registered voters in Little Ferry. Do the math: If half of them show up at the polls next Tuesday, and Nuckel unseats Democratic Mayor Thomas Quirico by just one vote, he would have spent $128 per vote.
Compare that with other big-spending campaigns by multimillionaires making their first runs for office: Jon Corzine, D-N.J., spent almost $42 per vote to win his U.S. Senate seat in 2000. The following year, Michael Bloomberg spent $98 per vote to become mayor of New York City.
"Little Ferry's worth it," Nuckel said.
The 48-year-old is a flamboyant presence, with his shaved head, sandpaper voice, and angular blue glasses. His arms whirl like the blades of a windmill as he talks, until his hands stab through the air to make a point. Whether he is praising or denouncing, when he sets his jaw for emphasis, his face forms a perfect pink circle.
"We're fighting for our future," Nuckel said. "And that means it's worth it."
Nuckel says he and his two Republican running mates for Borough Council - who have been all but invisible in the campaign - will try to give Little Ferry a voice as developers plan mega-projects like Xanadu in the Meadowlands.
"Everyone's making money around us," Nuckel said, gesticulating at the maps and papers scattered around a red-leather table. "Everyone's prospering ... except Little Ferry. That's wrong!"
But Nuckel's Democratic opponents don't agree that he is a magnanimous local boy made good, willing to spend some of his real-estate fortune so he can lead the town where his family has lived for three generations. They see his mayoral run as something else: a way for Little Ferry's biggest landowner to control the borough's zoning, build bigger, and make more money.
"I think it's business, on his end," said Quirico, the chief target of Nuckel's wrath. "I can't see why he would want to be the mayor of Little Ferry, unless it's going to be a hobby or a moneymaking enterprise."
Quirico, 52, who has been mayor for four years after 10 years as a councilman, says Nuckel wants to tear down the two-story apartments he owns in the northeast section of town, along the Hackensack River, and build high-rise towers that will alter the fabric of Little Ferry life.
"Mr. Nuckel wants to do that now, and we won't let him," Quirico says. "If he appoints the right people, they can rezone or issue a variance to allow him to build those high-rises."
Nuckel accuses Quirico of essentially the same thing. He says the mayor is scheming to designate those apartments a redevelopment area, condemn them, evict the mostly minority residents, and build high-rises.
"He's picking on people who can't stick up for themselves," Nuckel said. "That's what this war is about."
Quirico and Nuckel each have documents that they claim prove their case. And each denies the other's charges.
They also have dug deep into the public record to find dirt on the opposition.
It has emerged, for instance, that Quirico rarely attends meetings of the Planning Board, of which he is a member because of his office. Quirico says his presence isn't needed, and that he relies on a designee to represent him. But Nuckel says Quirico is abdicating a key responsibility to his constituents,given all the development under way nearby.
"How can you decide the future of Little Ferry if no one shows up?" Nuckel asked.
Nuckel, however, has had to explain some uncomfortable facts about himself.
He was registered to vote in Saddle River from 1994 until earlier this year, and also is registered to vote at a home he owns in upstate New York. He changed his New Jersey registration to an apartment in one of his Little Ferry buildings in April - barely a month before he filed to run for mayor. Nuckel says he has always been an active participant in Little Ferry affairs, no matter which of his several homes he has used as his voting address. But Quirico says Nuckel is essentially a newcomer.
"He's been here a year, maybe," Quirico said. "He really is not familiar with the issues in the town."
Nuckel is focused intently on Little Ferry now, although he has donated to more than his own campaign - making for an interesting wrinkle. The Republican gave $10,000 to the Bergen County Democratic Party in January, and another $10,000 in March. He says it was to "support people for good government" and because he has long known the county Democratic chairman, Joseph Ferriero.
But shortly after those donations were made, Quirico says, Ferriero approached him with an interesting proposition.
"I had a conversation with [Ferriero]. He said, 'Would you be interested in stepping down? Someone else will run in your place,'" the mayor recalled. "He said, 'If you want to step down, we'll see what we can do for you.'"
Quirico says he declined the offer, and never heard another word about it from Ferriero. Nuckel says he knows nothing about the allegation; attempts to reach Ferriero for a response were unsuccessful.
Nuckel's $162,000 - coincidentally, as much as the average assessed value of a house in Little Ferry - has purchased the kind of full-bore political campaign that North Jersey usually sees only in races that involve sending someone to an office in Trenton.
Nuckel has mailed thousands of slick fliers, put posters all over town, hired people to work full time in his campaign office, bought full-page newspaper ads, and held public banquets and parties for Little Ferry residents.
(Note: we attended the 2 banquests and they were quite the lavish affairs - a clambake held opposite the town's family fun day and a october fest which invites were mailed to and he hired the Jimmy Sturr orchestra - a big name in polka circles! Alan DEFINITELY enjoyed the food!)
"We're running a legislative campaign in a municipal race," said Marc Zimmermann, Nuckel's campaign manager. "This has been a blessing because of the money. It's because Donald so believes in this."
Nuckel, who declines to estimate his worth, says he will end up putting $200,000 or so into the race before it's over next week. His opponents say it's much more, claiming that Nuckel's real estate company is paying for some of the events and activities that have promoted his campaign. In turn, Nuckel says the Democrats have used borough resources to promote themselves.
The latest campaign filing shows Quirico's slate with $33,000 on hand. In any other year, Quirico says, that would be enough to run a respectable campaign. This year, he says, the Democrats are running uphill, asking voters to show that Little Ferry can't be bought.
Nuckel is telling voters it's the other way around: His money pays for independence, a distinctive point of view, and a campaign that rises above the usual in North Jersey politics.
"We do not take political donations from anyone, and we will not," Nuckel said. "It's the way we do things. We need to do these things to replace these people."
E-mail: lisberg@northjersey.com
Mark and I won't vote for this guy. From what we know he's friends with the wrong element in town, plus his changes may send property values down :(
Money can't buy votes - ok, Alan would vote for him, but at age 1, he can be bribed with food!
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