Sergio Bichao

@sbichao

UPDATE: 11 a.m., May 30 -- A new video has surfaced claiming to show Assemblyman Jerry Green, D-22nd District, in an ugly confrontation with a campaign worker last year.

The video was posted online Thursday evening by Plainfield blogger David Rutherford in response to a MyCentralJersey.com story about Green threatening a city councilwoman with a lawsuit if she continued to "misquote" the video.

Green has not denied that it was him in the video, but he and his lawyer – along with man involved in the verbal altercation, Rickey P. Williams – this week said the audio was doctored. Williams signed a sworn affidavit stating the video was edited and dubbed.

"No way," Rutherford said Friday.

Rutherford said he did not record the video and was not present during the altercation, but he personally pulled the video file from the physical camera last year and posted an edited version of the video online. Rutherford declined to identify the cameraman because he did not have permission to release his name.

Rutherford said he was "really confused" about why Green would make an issue of the video a year later, and days before the city's Democrats vote in a City Council primary.

Councilwoman Rebecca Williams, meanwhile, is refusing to remove references to Green's alleged quotations from her blog.

ORIGINAL STORY, May 29: PLAINFIELD – It's a video that has made the online rounds since November, and a favorite go-to among political adversaries of Assemblyman Jerry Green, D-22nd District.

The video clips — shaky, barely in focus, abruptly cut — purportedly show Green in a white hoodie, black jacket and a wool cap arguing with somebody outside a polling place last year.

"Your momma's a (expletive deleted)," somebody shouts. Was it Green?

"I run this (expletive deleted)!"

For months, many of Green's critics have gleefully repeated the quotes. But now, days before a Democratic primary in which a slate of Green-backed City Council candidates face off against a slate backed by Mayor Adrian Mapp, Green has come out denying the foul words were uttered by him — and he says he has proof.

The proof is a sworn affidavit signed by Rickey P. Williams, the man who says he was in that infamous "verbal exchange" with Green outside the Barlow School polling place.

"The video did not accurately reflect the actual verbal exchange that took place between Assemblyman Green and myself," Williams says in the affidavit, obtained Wednesday by the Courier News. "I believe the video footage portrayed on the Internet was edited, dubbed, or otherwise doctored in such a way that misrepresents the actual exchange between Assemblyman Green and myself."

"At no time during our exchange, or anything thereafter in my presence, did Assemblyman Green state that he runs the City of Plainfield or any other town."

A copy of the affidavit was included with a cease-and-desist letter penned by Green's attorney, Kraig M. Dowd, of the Woodland Park firm Weber Dowd Law, and sent to Councilwoman Rebecca Williams, a candidate in Tuesday's primary and a frequent critic of Green. The councilwoman is not related to the man who signed the affadavit.

"The misquote that is being attributed to our client is patently false, is portraying our client in a false light, and is defamatory, and, as such, violates New Jersey law," reads the note, which threatens Williams with a lawsuit if she continues to repeat the quotation on her two blogs — And My Point Is: A Radical Vision for Plainfield, and Confessions of a Bathrobe Blogger.

Green is chairman of the city and Union County Democratic committees. He also is the chairman of the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee.

"This is very humiliating to me," Green said Thursday, saying Williams and the New Democrats are "no different than the Tea Party."

"This shows you how people will go to the gutter. I have earned respect at the county, state and national level. They are trying to get me to play gutter politics and I have refused to do that."

Williams on Thursday said she did not intend to change her blog posts.

"I have not been ordered by a judge," she said. "Everybody in our community knows what he said."

Green acknowledged that he got into the verbal tiff with Rickey P. Williams, whom Green said was upset because the Democratic committee had backed Mapp instead of Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs, who fell out of favor with Green. But Green says he backed Mapp only as a courtesy to the then chairwoman of the county Democratic committee.

The primary campaign season has sharpened tensions among the warring Democratic factions. On Thursday, the City Council was expected to pass a resolution calling on the State Ethics Commission to look into a video Mapp taped for the city's public-access channel. Council members said Mapp's video, which criticized Green's involvement in city affairs, was political and inappropriate.

Meanwhile, the regular Democratic organization this week mailed voters a letter from state Senate President Steve Sweeney condemning the New Democrats.

"It's a measure of (Green's) anger and hysteria that he would get the top Democrat in the state to write a letter about our little local election and characterize me as a Tea Party person," Williams said. "I've been a progressive Democrat."

Staff Writer Sergio Bichao: 908-243-6615; sbichao@MyCentralJersey.com