Monica Honis

PolitickerNJ.com's Winners & Losers of the Week

In Teaneck, both sides in the hotly contested council election play down their part in the long-standing feud between Bergen County Democratic Organization Chairman Joe Ferriero and state Sen. Loretta Weinberg.

But here in Weinberg’s home town, that rift is impossible to avoid. 

Sitting down for a roast beef and chopped liver sandwich at a kosher eatery called Noah’s Ark on Cedar Avenue, councilman Elnatan Rudolph said that, while he doesn’t hide his ties to Ferriero, his opponents are the ones making the rift an issue.  He noted a campaign piece that depicted him as a wind up toy, with Ferriero doing the winding. 

While Honis and the two other candidates who act as her semi-official running mates dismiss partisan politics, Rudolph doesn’t buy it.

“They can tell you that.  But it’s the same people who worked for (Weinberg), the same county committee men and women, who are supporting them in the race,” he said.

Just days before the May 13 municipal elections, Teaneck Councilwoman Monica Honis seems to be getting a pass from some leaders of the Jewish community, despite a controversial comment that week suggesting that re-electing her without also supporting her two running mates was akin to sending her “to the gas chamber.”  Rebecca Kaplan Boronson, the editor of the New Jersey Jewish Standard, told PolitickerNJ.com that she had no comment on the controversy.  Boronson wrote an editorial last month suggesting that a political cartoon may have intentionally sent a subliminal anti-Semitic message.  Two others who criticized the cartoon, Rep. Steve Rothman and the New Jersey Anti-Defamation League, did not return calls seeking comment on Honis’ statement.

This week's PolitickerNJ.com Winners & Losers:

State Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck) thinks that a Teaneck councilwoman’s “gas chamber” comment was not intended to offend her Jewish colleagues, but that Monica Honis erred by not saying she’s sorry.

“I think it was a slip of the tongue, and I think that she should have immediately apologized,” said Weinberg, who’s not endorsing anyone in her home town’s council race. “And if she didn’t immediately do it, she should have at the subsequent council meeting.”

At a block association meeting on Monday, Honis, who’s up for re-election, said that picking her and not her two running mates would be like sending her “to the gas chamber.”  Honis’s Jewish counterparts on the council took offense to that statement, saying that it was an insensitive reference to the holocaust.