Tom Barrett

Barrett and Kerry synchronize their BlackBerrys.: Politicker photo  

DENVER - Essex County operative Tom Barrett didn’t really have a horse in the race at this point. But Essex County Freeholder Linda Lordi Cavanaugh and party diehard Erica Vargas-Garrison did.

This would be Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-NY) "Don’t Cry for me Argentina" moment, and consummate party insider Barrett wanted to make sure his old party gal pals got there for the coming Clinton catharsis.

He settled up with the waiter at the Palms and high-stepped it for Lawrence Avenue where Cavanaugh and Vargas-Garrison were already hobbling double-time on high heels on their way out to hail a cab.

"Come on, Tom, we’re late," cried Lordi Cavanaugh.

As the women piled in, Barrett caught sight of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) emerging from one, and soft-shoeing after a high-class-looking brunette.

DENVER - A good orator indulges in autobiography to the extent that he or she can connect to a common story, with the danger never far that the wrong points of emphasis can entrap the speaker in self congratulations.

Michelle Obama’s Southside Chicago roots and maternal () treaded too close to the edges of egotism for only a handful of the New Jersey delegation, with most Democrats hailing the effort as a dead-on bull’s-eye.

They spilled into the spacious Celtic Tavern on Blake Street after the convention on Monday night, and the liquor flowed as U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park) celebrated the presidential candidate’s wife as a people’s champion.

"Her speech reached out and spoke to the common story," said Lautenberg. "It reminded me very much of my own story, growing up in Paterson, working hard, having a father who died young. She told a story that many of us can relate to."

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; 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.