Nicholas Chiaravalloti

Could next year bring a Chiaravalloti (left)-Chiappone part II?

BAYONNE – Running off the line last year, attorney Nicholas Chiaravalloti lost his race for the Assembly in District 31, and doesn’t yet know if he will run next year.

“I haven’t ruled it out, but honestly, I haven’t even thought about it,” said the former state director for Sen. Robert Menendez (D-Hoboken), who recently opened his own law practice in Bayonne. “Between all of the Obama ads and the mail for the Bayonne mayor’s race, I don’t even want to think about politics right now.

 “I love what I’m doing and I love my quality of life,” added Chiaravalloti. “I know (Bayonne Mayor) Mark Smith, and I supported Mark Smith. He’s not giving a second thought to anything political at the moment.”

U.S. Senator Robert Menendez has hired a new State Director: Michael Soliman, who has been working for Congressman Steven Rothman as his District Director. Soliman fills the post vacated last spring by Nicholas Chiaravalloti, who sought the Democratic nomination for State Assembly in the 31st district.

William Ayala, former chief of staff to the late Mayor Glenn Cunningham and a former candidate for the Assembly, has endorsed Assemblyman Louis Manzo for state Senate in district 31, the opponent of the mayor's widow, Sandra Bolden Cunningham.

Who wins this district 31 Assembly race in Bayonne comes down to whether voters approve of the general direction here since the city suffered the closure of the Military Ocean Terminal in 2000, or whether the slow rebuilding effort has largely been a bust, overcast by a perception of not enough people-power at the bargaining table.

On that latter side of Broadway Avenue is photographer Anthony Chiappone, a determinedly gadfly Bayonne City Councilman who built a reputation as a government watchdog with his local cable television program before getting into political office himself in the 1990s, jousting with veteran Bayonne Mayor (and state Senator) Joseph Doria, and later allying with maverick Jersey City Mayor Glenn Cunningham.

A few blocks up on the other side of the street stands the rival campaign headquarters of attorney Nicholas Chiaravalloti. A former Doria staffer who came out of Our Lady of the Assumption Parish, filing papers in Doria’s Assembly office as a boy, Chiaravalloti worked his way up in adulthood to become state director for U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez before resigning a month ago to focus on this campaign.

U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg has named Joseph Waks as his new State Director. Waks served as Congressman Bill Pascrell’s Communications Director, as Chief of Staff to Bayonne Mayor Joseph Doria, and as Appointments Counsel to Governor Richard Codey. Waks succeeds Noreen Giblin, who has joined the Corzine administration.

Footnote: the State Director for New Jersey's other U.S. Senator, Nicholas Chiaravalloti, is also a former Chief of Staff to Doria. Chiaravalloti is on a leave of absence so he can work on Robert Menendez's campaign.