Content area
Full Text
It's Been Rough, Corrupt and Downright Weird for More Than a Century
"People always ask me how I spent my time in prison, and I say, 'I just read a lot,'" Jerry tells me as we trundle along the Jersey City streets in his Volvo. "They would get you any book you asked for, so I ended up reading every title on the New York Times bestseller list," he explains with the tone of satisfaction one might detect in somebody who feels they've gotten a really good deal.
It's an overcast afternoon in northern New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan, and we're driving towards the prep school where Jerry now coaches boys track.
We pull up to the curb and he suggests we get out and chat on the sidewalk. Parked illegally, he proclaims "I don't get parking tickets" in his north Jersey accent before springing from the driver's seat.
And there's a reason. Jerry McCann, now in his late 50's, was mayor of Jersey City twice, serving from 1981 to 1985, and then again from 1989 to 1992, when his tenure in City Hall met with an abrupt demise. McCann, who still vehemently maintains his innocence, was convicted on charges of fraud relating to a loan scam, and was hauled off to federal prison in Pennsylvania where he served more than two years behind bars. The central figures responsible for sending him up the river were two rising New Jersey Republicans named Michael Chertoff and Samuel Alito, both of whom McCann still assails as vicious, politically motivated witch-hunters. "We're going to send Mr. Chertoff back to preparing wills," McCann was quoted as saying at the time. "Maybe I can find him a job driving a garbage truck in Jersey City."
McCann, who still appears to wield some political influence in the city, now sits on the Jersey City School Board, although his election to the post last year was challenged in court. In dispute were some votes McCann received from local nursing homes in which many of the residents were infirm, unfit or otherwise incapacitated. One resident in particular-the father of the current mayor's chief of staff-generated controversy when he claimed to have been tricked into voting for McCann....