Ray Durkin

Steve Adubato, Jr., presides over a meeting between Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo, center, and Sen. Joseph Kyrillos.: Politicker photo 

SPRING LAKE - They drove and were driven to the Irish Riviera from all corners of New Jersey, in cars with government plates on them and dark SUVs and sedans with tinted glass, sporting sunglasses and paunches covered with sports jackets, mostly Democrats and a handful of Republicans, converging on this mansion by the sea.

Congressmen and mayors and assembly people and state senators and opposition researchers and retainers.

Standing at the front of the Seashell Dining Room in the Breakers to greet them was Steve Adubato, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and welcoming smile - and casting an eye that invariably sharpens human activity into the lineaments of political theater.

"I believe in the luck of the Irish," said the executive director of Newark’s North Ward Center and head of the Democratic Party in the North Ward, facing a sun-filled room packed with rivals hunched over plates of eggs and bacon: Gov. Jon Corzine and Republican State Party Chairman Tom Wilson; former Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo, and Assemblyman Albert Coutinho and Assemblwoman Grace Spencer; Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo and Assemblyman Thomas Giblin (D-Montclair).

In this poor man’s Olympiad of Jersey ethnic groups gathered under one roof, Adubato highlighted - as he does annually at this North Ward Center-sponsored breakfast - the Irish, who now number 141,379 registered voters in New Jersey, or 47,514 Democrats, 36,063 Republicans and 57,802 independents.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker, backing up Senate President Richard Codey's endorsement of Obama.

Obama Campaign State Director Mark Alexander knew it would be hard to pry Sen. Hillary Clinton’s supporters loose in New Jersey after her victory in New Hampshire.

This was a fight now, and Clinton’s people were solid.

"We have an opportunity here in Hudson - Hudson, Hispanics, Hillary and history," Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) cried to a North Bergen audience of mostly Latinos with Clinton on stage.

The response was near to deafening with Clinton standing on stage with Menendez, U.S. Rep. Albio Sires (D-13) and state Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex).

But that didn’t mean there weren’t other opportunities for Obama; in fact, one big opportunity, in the form of Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex), who was at the moment glumly serving as state director for the foundering campaign of John Edwards.

Alexander knew Codey. He also knew Codey was close to former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley (D-NJ), who had come onto the Obama campaign as an advisor.