Mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey

The Mayor of the City of Hoboken is the head of the executive branch of government of Hoboken, New Jersey, United States. The mayor has the duty to enforce the municipal charter and ordinances; prepare the annual budget; appoint deputy mayors, department heads, and aides; and approve or veto ordinances passed by the City Council. The mayor is popularly elected in a nonpartisan general election. The office is held for a four-year term without term limits.

Mayor of the City of Hoboken
Incumbent Ravinder Bhalla since 2018
Term length	Four years
Inaugural holder	Cornelius V. Clickener
Formation	1855
Salary	$116,000
Website	Mayor Ravi Bhalla

Thirty-eight individuals have held the office of mayor since the City of Hoboken was chartered on March 29, 1855. Cornelius V. Clickener was the inaugural mayor of the city, and served two consecutive terms. The current mayor is Ravinder Bhalla; he was first elected in November 2017. On July 20, 2010, the Hoboken Council voted to move the nonpartisan municipal elections to be held on the same day as the statewide general election in November.^[1]

Duties and powers

The City of Hoboken is organized as a mayor-council form of government under the Optional Municipal Charter Law. This provides for a citywide elected mayor serving in an executive role, as well as a city council serving in a legislative role. All of these offices are selected in a nonpartisan municipal election and all terms are four years.^[2] Under state law, the mayor has the duty to enforce the charter and ordinances of the city, and all applicable state laws; report annually to the council and the public on the state of the city; supervise and control all departments of the government; prepare and submit to the council annual operating and capital budgets; supervise all city property, institutions and agencies; sign all contracts and bonds requiring the approval of the city; negotiate all contracts; and serve as a member, either voting or ex officio, of all appointive bodies.^[3]

The mayor has the power to appoint departments heads with the approval of the City Council; to remove department heads subject to a two-thirds disapproval by the City Council; approve or veto ordinances subject to an override vote of two-thirds of the council; and appoint deputy mayors. The mayor is permitted to attend and participate in meetings of the City Council, without a vote, except in the case of a tie on the question to fill a council vacancy.^[3]

Succession

In the event of an absence, disability, or other cause preventing the mayor from performing his duties, the mayor may designate the business administrator or any other department head as acting mayor for up to 60 days.^[3] In the event of a vacancy in the office, the President of the City Council becomes acting mayor, and the council has 30 days to name an interim mayor. If no interim mayor is named, the Council President continues as acting mayor until a successor is elected, or until the council reorganizes and selects a new President. Prior to 1971, there was no automatic succession law.^[4]

Mayors

Rank	Rank[note 1]	Mayor	Years in office	Notes
1	1	Cornelius V. Clickener	1855–1857	Cornelius V. Clickener was the first mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey.
2	2, 4	Franklin B. Carpenter	1857–1858, 1859–1860	He was a lumber merchant who served in the New York State Assembly from Otsego County in 1845. He served two nonconsecutive terms as the second and fourth mayor from 1857 to 1858 and 1859 to 1860. He then served one term in the New Jersey General Assembly in 1861.[5][6][7][note 1]
3	3	George William Morton	1858–1859	Morton served as the first Treasurer of Hoboken being elected in the 1855 Charter election.[8] He was appointed as a Water Commissioner in 1857.[9] Morton was the Democratic nominee for mayor in 1858.[10] He served a single term and was defeated by his predecessor in the 1859 election. Morton was the Clerk of the Court for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York under Judge Samuel Betts.[11]
4	5	John R. Johnston	1860–1863	"Hon. John R. Johnston. Mayor of Hoboken, died early on Saturday morning, after a protracted illness, in the 67th year of his age. Mayor Johnston was an upright man, and was highly esteemed by all who knew him. The funeral will take place this (Monday) afternoon, at 2 o'clock, from Trinity Church, and will be attended by the City authorities."[12][5][13]
5	6	Lorenzo Welton Elder	1863–1864	He was a brigade surgeon of the New Jersey Army National Guard. It was through his efforts that the Hudson County Board of Health was established. He was president of the Hudson County Pathology Society and was deputy adjutant-general on the staff of Governor Rodman McCamley Price. He was the local medical examiner of the Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company of Newark, New Jersey, and of the New York Life Insurance Company. He was three times elected as the tax commissioner for Hoboken.[14]
6	7	Charles T. Perry	1864–1865	He was born on January 10, 1812, in Massachusetts to George Perry. On December 13, 1838, in Sandwich, Massachusetts he married Caroline Goodson. Perry was president of the Hudson County Gaslight Company and a director of the First National Bank of Hoboken.[15] Perry died of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head on January 9, 1872.[16]
7	8	Frederick Beasley Ogden	1865–1867
8	9	Frederick W. Bohnstedt	1867–1869
9	10	Hazen Kimball	1869–1871	He was born on February 19, 1835, in Barton, Vermont. He was vice president of the First National Bank of Hoboken and president of the Gansevoort Bank of New York. He died on June 22, 1890, of apoplexy in Hoboken, New Jersey.[17]
10	11	Frederick L. Schmersahl	1871–1873	He was a German-American merchant.
11	12	Peter McGavisk	1873–1875
12	13	Joseph Russel	1875–1878
13	14, 16	Elbridge Van Syckel Besson	1878–1880, 1881–1883	[note 1]
14	15	John A. O'Neill	1880–1881
15	17	Herman L. Timken	1883–1886
16	18	Edwin J. Kerr	1886–1888
17	19	August Grassman	1888–1891
18	20	Edward R. Stanton	1891–1892
19	21	William Ellis	1892–1893
20	22	Lawrence Fagan	1893–1901
21	23	Adolph Lankering	1901–1906
22	24	George Henry Steil	1906–1910
23	25	George Washington Gonzales	1910–1912
24	26	Martin Cooke	1912–1915
25	27	Patrick R. Griffin	1915–1926
26	28	Gustav Bach	1926–1929
27	29	Bernard N. McFeely	1930–1947
28	30	Fred M. De Sapio	1947–1953
29	31	John J. Grogan	1953–1965
30	32, 34	Louis De Pascale	1965, 1965–1973	[note 1]
31	33	Silvio Failla	1965
32	35	Steve Cappiello	1973–1985
33	36	Thomas Vezzetti	1985–1988	He served as mayor from 1985 until he died in office in 1988. He fought against the gentrification of the city.
34	37	Patrick Pasculli	1988–1993	He served as acting mayor at the death of Vezzetti. He ran for mayor in 1989 on the promise to open the Hoboken waterfront to development.[18] Pasculli's campaign led to the formation of the Coalition for a Better Waterfront which opposed his plan to lease city-owned land to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for commercial development.[18]
35	38	Anthony Russo	1993–2001	He was charged with corruption in 2003 while a Hoboken city councilman.[19]
36	39	David Roberts	2001–2009	A former firefighter who served two consecutive terms.[20]
37	40	Peter Cammarano	2009	Arrested in Operation Bid Rig and resigned 30 days after being sworn into office.
38	41	Dawn Zimmer	2009–2017	Dawn Zimmer was the first female mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey. As president of the city council, became acting mayor after Cammarano's resignation. Won special election on November 6, 2009, for the remainder of Cammarano's term. Elected in her own right in 2013.
39	42	Ravi Bhalla	2017–	Ravi Bhalla is the first Sikh Mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey. He was endorsed by predecessor Dawn Zimmer who announced in June 2017 that she would not be seeking re-election.

Notes

1. Because Franklin B. Carpenter, E.V.S. Besson and Louis de Pascale each served two nonconsecutive terms as mayor, the rank for all who followed each person became offset from the actual number of people who served (and as a result there have been 38 people who have served 41 mayoral terms). Because of this, rank can be determined either by the actual number of people who served (left column) or the mayoral terms served (right column).

References

General

• "150 Years of Hoboken Anniversary Journal". The Hudson Reporter. March 28, 2005. p. 62.

Specific

1. Musat, Stephanie (July 21, 2011). "Hoboken council majority moves next election from May 2013 to November 2013". The Jersey Journal. Retrieved July 21, 2011.
2. "Faulkner Act (OMCL) Mayor-Council". Types And Forms Of New Jersey Municipal Government. New Jersey State League of Municipalities. Archived from the original on September 27, 2007. Retrieved November 15, 2009.
3. "Optional Municipal Charter Law" (PDF). New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, Division of Local Government Services. State of New Jersey. 2003. Retrieved November 15, 2009.^{[permanent dead link‍]}
4. "New Jersey Statutes Annotated, 40A:9-131". New Jersey State Legislature. Retrieved January 27, 2010.^{[permanent dead link‍]}
5. Winfield, Charles (1874). History of the County of Hudson, New Jersey: from its earliest settlement to the present time. New York, NY: Kennard & Hay Stationery M'fg and Print. Co. p. 319.
6. Ward, George Kemp (1912). Genealogy of the Olmsted family in America: embracing the descendants of James and Richard Olmsted and covering a period of nearly three centuries, 1632-1912. A.T. De La Mare Print. and Pub. Co. p. 58. Franklin carpenter hoboken mayor.
7. Fitzgerald, Thomas F. (1892). Manual of the Legislature of New Jersey. p. 97.
8. "New Jersey; Hoboken Charter Election" (PDF). The New York Times. April 14, 1855. p. 1.
9. "New-Jersey.; Injunction Refused. Election of Officers. The Hoboken Water Question" (PDF). The New York Times. December 3, 1857. Retrieved December 9, 2010.
10. "New Jersey Items" (PDF). The New York Times. April 10, 1858.
11. "Death of George W. Morton". The New York Times. May 9, 1865. Retrieved December 9, 2010. Mr. Morton, for many years clerk of the District Court of the United States, presided over by Judge Betts, in this city, died on Sunday morning at his residence in Hoboken. ...
12. "Death of Mayor Johnston, of Hoboken". The New York Times. April 20, 1863.
13. "Military Affairs in New Jersey". New York Times. Retrieved 2015-02-13. Hon. John R. Johnston, Mayor of the city, presided. ...
14. Atkinson, William Biddle (1878). "Lorenzo W. Elder". The Physicians and Surgeons of the United States. C. Robson. p. 356. Lorenzo W. Elder, Hoboken, N. J., was born in Guilford, Chenango co., N. Y., April 15th, 1820. He was educated at the Guilford district school, and studied medicine at the coll. of phys. and surg. of New York city, graduating in 1847. ...
15. Costa, Isaac (1867). Gopsill's Jersey City and Hoboken directory for the year ending 30th April, 1867. James Gopsill. p. 431.
16. "Suicide of the Ex-Mayor of Hoboken" (PDF). New York Times. January 10, 1872. Retrieved December 23, 2010.
17. "Hazen Kimball" (PDF). New York Times. June 23, 1890. Hazen Kimball dropped dead in Hoboken yesterday of apoplexy. He was one of the best known citizens of Hoboken, and in 1869 and 1870 was Mayor of that city. At the time of his death ...
18. Romano, Jay (March 29, 1992). "How a 'Bunch of Amateurs' Learned to Fight City Hall". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-09-01. The grass-roots movement began in 1989 when Patrick Pasculli ran for Mayor on a platform that included a plan to lease city-owned waterfront land to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for development. ...
19. "Former Mayor Of Hoboken Is Accused Of Corruption". New York Times. September 26, 2003. Retrieved 2015-02-13. Anthony J. Russo, the two-term former mayor of Hoboken, was indicted today on federal corruption and bribery charges a little more than a month after he ended a political comeback ...
20. Gettleman, Jeffrey (15 June 2005). "Mayor of Hoboken Wins 2nd Term in Bitter Runoff Election". New York Times. Retrieved 16 January 2011. Mayor David Roberts, a former firefighter and a favorite of the local Democratic Party, won a second term Tuesday night in a bitterly contested runoff election. ...

External links

• Hoboken Mayor Cammarano arrested by FBI: report
• N.J. officials, N.Y. rabbis caught in federal money laundering, corruption sweep
• Mayors of Hoboken, New Jersey at Political Graveyard