Is there a message for Chairman Mapp in the Primary numbers (Council)?

With the Primary past, will it continue to be Dem vs. Dem?

Sixteen-year councilor Cory Storch lost the June Primary election, meaning his run on City Council will come to close on December 31.

Councilor Barry Goode won the Wards 1/4 Primary only because former Councilor Bridget Rivers played the role of spoiler in the contest.

Are there any messages for Plainfield Democratic chair Adrian O. Mapp in all of this?

I think the answer has to be "Yes". But what are they?

To understand the implications of the 2019 Primary vote, it is useful to go back. Way back.

The New Democrats were born when the late Mayor Al McWilliams decided to go for a second term. The whole movement began with him as mayor and Adrian Mapp as a supportive councilman.

Al had been a councilman before becoming mayor and lived in the Second Ward. His primary voter base was in the Second Ward, and this remained true of the New Democrats even after Al's untimely passing and Mapp's designation as chairman of the organization.

The New Democrats strength was always in this descending order: Ward 2, Ward 3, Ward 1, and Ward 4.

There were always strong currents of support for Assemblyman Jerry Green in Wards 1 and 4, against which the New Democrats failed to make much headway over the years.

Ward 3 was always a contested ward. Sharon Robinson-Briggs was able to build a substantial and persistent base in Ward 3.

Mapp, even though he lived in Ward 3 and consistently won a committee seat in District 3-9, was not able to dominate it in the same way that the New Democrats dominated Ward 2. (Witness the two attempts to get Charles McRae elected to City Council).

All this leads to one point: Ward 2 was crucial for the New Democrats' defeat of Assemblyman Green -- both in control of City Council and the Plainfield Democratic City Committee (PDCC).

Is it still?

I think so.

So, what does the loss of the Ward 2 contest and the Wards 1/4 results mean?

WARD TWO

While the turnout in the 2019 Primary was not exceptional (there were no national or statewide races), the nature of the campaign and pattern pattern of voting are important.

First, the campaign. Though on paper it appeared as a contest between a 16-year incumbent (Storch) and an upstart challenger (McKenna), the campaign itself revealed a different target.

Instead of attacking Storch on his policies or stands on issues, McKenna's campaign focused on Storch as a proxy for Mayor Adrian Mapp and his policies and projects.

What were the major issues the McKenna campaign focused on? --

• Budget cuts to the Library and Recreation;

• Seven SUVs for the Mayor and high-ranking City employees;

• The large increase in the Mayor's salary;

• Construction of a Wawa on South Avenue; and

• Taking a delegation of seven to the US Conference of Mayors conference in Hawaii.

Storch played no central part in any of these issues, protested some of them, and was in NO position to block any of them.

However, McKenna was able to use them to successfully defeat Storch in the Primary.

Not only was Storch overcome, it is helpful to see the voting patterns.

Storch took four of the ward's eleven districts (1, 4, 7, and 11). Three of these had the lowest turnouts in the ward. And he lost the vote for Council in his own district (10), with just one third of the vote.

Not only did McKenna take seven districts, they were the heaviest voting districts in the ward (9, 6, 3, 10, 5, 8, and 2).

WARDS ONE/FOUR

Once the New Democrats cemented their victory with election of Mayor Mapp in 2014, taking control of the Council and the PDCC was a matter of a mopping up campaign.

With the departure of Bridget Rivers (Ward 4), the only dissenting voice on the Council was Diane Toliver (Ward 1). In 2017, Mapp assumed leadership of the PDCC.

Barry Goode was Mapp's first successful pick for the Wards 1/4 at-large seat and was elected in November 2015.

His Primary race this year was complicated by having two opponents -- Bridget Rivers and Terri Briggs Jones.

Rivers, it turns out, played the spoiler role. If she had not run, it seems likely Briggs Jones would have defeated Goode.

Briggs Jones echoed some of McKenna's themes (the Wawa and the Hawaii trip), but added a third, a personal attack on Goode over an unresolved DUI charge from 2017.

Goode lost Ward 4 to Briggs Jones (190 to 215), with Rivers coming in third (83). His victory came from Ward 1 (388 - 219 - 89), where he won with the assistance of Ward 1 Councilor Ashley Davis.

What does all of this imply for Mapp?

While he could have been expected to lead a unified Democratic Plainfield after the passing of Jerry Green, he has instead presided over its fragmentation.

There appears to be a considerable anti-Mapp sentiment, which the 2019 Primary results lay bare.

It looks like trouble ahead when Mapp runs in two years, unless he is able to  make headway -- especially with Wards 2 and 3.

Next year's contests for Citywide at-large (Elton Armady) and Ward 3 (Charles McRae) will provide yet another opportunity to see how the various wards and their districts line up and whether the anti-Mapp sentiment will have evaporated.

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  -- Dan Damon [follow]

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