In Englewood Cliffs, the mayor dared a visiting police chief to a fistfight.

In Palisades Park, the mayor and his mentor dueled over which man doled out more patronage jobs to cronies.

For a time, Rockaway Township had two mayors.

What’s to explain the silly, often offensive, always embarrassing fights currently tearing these three towns apart?

"This just makes us look even more ridiculous," said Paul Minenna, one of two men recently appointed to serve as mayor of Rockaway Township simultaneously.

All of this outrage — some of it feigned, some of it pure and seething — is rooted in the death of a local power structure, and the scramble for power that followed.

For years Rockaway Township, Palisades Park and Englewood Cliffs each had its politics controlled by a small group of insiders. By controlling municipal and school district budgets, government contracts and jobs, election rules and political donations, cronies were rewarded and opponents quashed.

“New Jersey residents are among the nation's best educated and most affluent voters, but they have appeared content over the years to leave politics to local political bosses,” according to the 1974 American Political Almanac, which remains definitive, said Marc Pfeiffer, an expert in New Jersey government. “And the bosses, it turns out, have been the most venal and corrupt political manipulators outside, perhaps, the 1600 and 1700 blocks of Pennsylvania Avenue.”

And these North Jersey political dynasties often prove remarkably durable. In Palisades Park, Michael Pollotta used his position as Democratic Party chairman to control the borough’s politics from 1961 until he was ousted iin 2016.

“It’s a tradition that is rooted in our political DNA,” said Pfeiffer, assistant director of the Bloustein Local Government Research Center at Rutgers University.

All dynasties die, however, due either to internal divisions or, as was the case in Englewood Cliffs, Rockaway Township and Palisades Park, an attack by political outsiders.

That's when local politics can turn sour, and things can get weird.

Palisades Park

By some metrics, James Rotundo mastered the art of New Jersey small town governance.

Rotundo is mayor of Palisades Park and executive director of the Northwest Bergen County Utilities Authority. He also held a part-time job managing the borough's school janitors. His former business partner was hired as the town’s building official; his wife as a secretary in the town’s construction office.

Rotundo’s sister works in the clerks office. One of his sons works as a police lieutenant in Palisades Park; another was both a schoolteacher in town and manager of the borough’s pools.

Rotundo’s patronage network was exposed by his own political mentor, Pollotta, in an interview with The Record. Rotundo returned fire, pointing out that his former business partner replaced Pollotta’s son, Anthony, as building official, and that his wife replaced Pollotta’s daughter-in-law in the construction office.

“We got into a shootout” over Rotundo pushing for his son the teacher to become a vice principal of a local school, Pollotta told NorthJersey.com and the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey.

Using public office to reward one’s supporters and relatives isn’t rare in New Jersey, Pfeiffer said. What’s rare is that in Palisades Park the leaders committed a cardinal sin: they unmasked each other.

“You have a lot of these practices that are handed down from generation to generation of elected officials,” Pfeiffer said. “It is unfortunate that some political leaders are unable to evolve as the needs of their communities and their residents change.”

Englewood Cliffs

As mayor of Englewood Cliffs, Joseph Parisi worked with fellow Democrats in the police and fire departments and the borough council to maintain power. His ally Michael Cioffi was sued twice for allegedly using his office as assistant police chief to punish Republican rivals in both public safety departments.

Cioffi’s promotion to chief in 2010, followed by a Republican sweep of the borough council and mayor’s office in 2016, exposed the power structure to attack.

Members of the warring factions sued each other nearly two dozen times. Meetings grew raucous. Speaking in support of Cioffi, New Jersey Police Chiefs Association President Raymond Hayducka challenged Republican Mayor Mario Kranjac.

“I take offense to that smile you have on your face,” Hayducka said.

The mayor responded with a schoolyard taunt.

“Are you going to come up here and wipe it off?" Kranjac said.

Rockaway Township

In Rockaway Township, where most of the players are Republicans, things grew even stranger.

For years the local power structure's public face was Mayor Michael Dachisen, whose father, Stephen, had been a well-liked police chief. One early indication that Dachisen had accumulated passionate enemies came in 2007, when a resident named Tucker Kelley was convicted of licking Dachisen’s face.

You read that correctly.

Later Kelley and his ally, Jeremy Jedynak, both Republicans,won seats on the council. They denounced Dachisen, and filed a lawsuit concerning the mayor’s taxpayer-funded health benefits. On Aug. 15, Dachisen died unexpectedly from a stress-induced heart attack.

Many Dachisen supporters believe the lawsuit played a role in Dachisen’s stress and death.

Instead of making peace, however, Jedynak and his team overplayed their weak hand.

Under state statute, the council had a responsibility to vote on a new mayor within 30 days of Dachisen's death. If they didn't act in time, the township's Republican committee then had the authority to step in and pick a mayor.

The council scheduled a last-minute meeting for 10:30 p.m. onFriday, Sept. 14, without providing the required 48-hour notice to the public, and tapped allied councilman Paul Minenna as interim mayor. They also fired Dachisen’s friend John Iaciofano as township attorney, and hired John Inglesino, a controversial figure accused of running a political machine in nearby Parsippany.

Chaos ensued.

The township’s Republican committee, believing the council's vote took place after its 30-day deadline to act, appointed a different person to lead the city, leaving the township two competing mayors, and making Rockaway the butt of jokes.

But the committee's choice showed a certain shrewdness: members tapped Adam Salberg, whose wife, Lisa, was so close to Dachisen she spoke at his funeral. She has also spearheaded an effort to recall Jedynak.

Ultimately, a Superior Court judge found the council's Sept. 14 meeting illegal because the public had not been given 48 hours notice about it, so Salberg — not Minenna — now serves as mayor. The judge said the council's lack of planning to meet the 30-day deadline to choose a new mayor "wreaked havoc with one of its most important duties."

The fights in each of these communities grew incredibly heated and complex, with subordinates wasting taxpayer money by suing each other as their leaders fell.

What they all had in common was a local power structure under siege.

Expand the tent

“I’m not saying it’s good or bad,” Pfeiffer said of the tendency for political leadership in small towns to fall to a small number of people. “Yes, you have places where it falls apart, but in other places it works pretty well.”

To Pfeiffer, the real difference between a functioning power structure in a township like Woodbridge, Middlesex County, and a failing one like Englewood Cliffs is the skill with which small-town leaders welcome new players into the old system.

If Pfeiffer’s correct, a person like Michael Pollotta is less a villain than a role model.

A year before his riff with Rotundo, and two years before his own death in 2017, Pollotta backed Christopher Chung to join the Palisades Park school board. Chung is Korean-American, and the move was important both symbolically and strategically, as it signaled the white, English-speaking power structure finally was ready to welcome Palisades Park's large Korean community into the fold.

“Good political leaders are able to manage a big tent,” Pfeiffer said. “I think where you have people become powerful political leaders is because they’ve done a good job in maintaining a solid base. . . and finding ways to utilize the energy of people who might otherwise become opponents.”

The tent didn't stay open long. Chung ran for mayor this year, and the race got ugly, with Rotundo's mother posting a racist rant against Koreans on Facebook.

In the June primary, Chung beat Rotundo by eight votes. But the racism continued.

As the general election looms, Palisades Park has become bitterly divided, with most members of the Korean community on one side, most supporters of Rotundo on the other. One of Chung's opponents, an independent named Anthony "Willie" Sambogna, urged his followers on Facebook not "to vote for any Korean candidate."

If Chung wins, he will face a council stacked with Rotundo supporters. If someone else wins, that person will lead a borough where many Koreans — who make up more than 50 percent of the population — may believe they were excluded from power by a racist minority.

Michael Pollotta was smart enough to welcome potential rivals into his oligarchy.

It remains to be seen if his political descendants demonstrate similar wisdom.

Email: maag@northjersey.com

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