By JACQUELINE DURETT
Correspondent
SOUTH AMBOY — The city’s Democratic organization has a new leader, and it is the same person the organization pushed out just a year and a half ago.
Mayor Fred Henry, who the organization declined to support in his bid for re-election in 2014, now leads the Democrats and has taken the reins from the very person who he said led the effort to push him out — former longtime mayor John O’Leary.
In that primary, Henry went up against O’Leary’s pick, John O’Connell. O’Connell also had the support of the council members running for re-election, but Henry narrowly beat O’Connell, and later easily won the general election.
The result was bad blood within the party — tension that has eased over time, particularly between Henry and the sitting council. Henry said since the fallout from the 2014 primary, he and O’Leary have even mended fences, so much so that O’Leary was the one who asked him to consider the chairman role since O’Leary was planning on stepping down.
“We’ve been ironing things out,” Henry said. “He had actually asked me if I was interested, and I said, ‘Yes, I am.’”
Henry was voted in as chairman at the end of January.
As chairman, he said his focus is both on securing Democrats in the council positions that are up for re-election this year, something that based on the history of the city, should not be too much of a challenge — the council is and has been completely Democratic-controlled.
But he is also concerned about improving the pipeline of candidates and supporters — the people who will rise to run for council in the future. He said the Party needs more people, people who have creative ideas to solve problems.
“We don’t have all the answers,” he said of the existing slate of Democrats.
Henry said there are a few reasons why Democratic candidates are currently in short supply in South Amboy — reasons that are not limited to the city.
“People are becoming more [politically] independent,” he said, and are more reluctant to align themselves so closely to one party over the other. Another issue is the public scrutiny any council member faces once he or she is elected.
“You don’t want to go to a council meeting and have people yelling at you,” he said.
That scrutiny is something both Henry himself and O’Leary before him have faced, and he said he appreciates the progress both have made in South Amboy, even though their approaches have been very different. He said he has not always agreed with O’Leary’s decisions, particularly when it has come to the budget, but he said he values what O’Leary brings to the table working behind the scenes in the city, namely a deep knowledge of city processes and procedures, particularly with redevelopment. But it does not erase what happened in 2014.
“It was not an easy thing to get back into a working situation,” he said. “But for the good of the city, this is what we’re doing, and I think Jack recognizes that as well.”