The remarkable political story of “Big Steve” Adubato | Moran – NJ.com

When I heard the sad news that “Big Steve” Adubato had passed away, I flashed back more than a decade to the most bizarre phone call of my life.

It was 2007 and Adubato was at the peak of his powers, lord of a muscular political machine based in Newark. Over a half century, he had built a sprawling network of schools, day-care centers, a job-training program – all government funded, and all packed with patronage hires that Adubato shaped into an army of political foot soldiers he used to help friends and crush enemies.

On that day, Adubato told me he was about to fire one of his lieutenants, a member of the state Assembly, Wilfredo Caraballo.

“He’s in great danger now,” Adubato said.

Political bosses don’t have the power to fire legislators, at least in theory. But Adubato was about to school me on New Jersey politics.

He had made a deal with Gov. Jon Corzine on the budget, and Caraballo ditched the team, casting his vote for the other side. In Adubato-world, it was a mortal sin, unforgivable.

“When you leave the family, I have nothing to say to you,” Adubato growled. “That was totally unacceptable. I am personally extremely disappointed in Freddy.”

I called Caraballo, who had no idea what was about to hit him, or that I’d be the one to deliver the news. I read him the quotes from Adubato, and he let out a sigh.

“I am concerned,” he said. “If Steve doesn’t want someone, that can be very difficult. At some point, Steve and I will have to sit down and talk.

They talked but it didn’t help. Caraballo lost his next primary and his political career hit a dead end. Adubato’s army takes no prisoners.

This is not the democracy we studied in grade school. Caraballo was a star in the Legislature, a professor at Seton Hall Law School put in power by Newark voters. How could someone like Adubato, who never ran for office, fire him?

In many states, he couldn’t. But New Jersey has political machines, a handful of fiefdoms sprinkled across the land, run exclusively by white men. The most powerful today is based in Camden and run by George Norcross, a centrist who controls about one-quarter of the Democratic bloc in the Legislature.

But before Norcross, there was Adubato, whose machine survives him and has been run in recent years, as Adubato struggled with dementia, by Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo. A third machine based in Middlesex County under the direction of Chairman Kevin McCabe is elbowing its way into the front row now, with Speaker Craig Coughlin as its heavyweight.

Each of the machines has its own personality. Norcross raises huge sums of money and rules his team with an iron fist. McCabe’s gift is to find consensus, to herd sheep with a softer touch.

Adubato’s machine was a throwback, like the man himself. He never raised a ton of money. He built his machine with flesh and blood, and patronage hires were only the start of it. The magic ingredient was Adubato’s own oversized personality, above all his belief in the power of coalitions and teamwork.

“He understood the power of personal relationships in politics,” says former Gov. Chris Christie. “Sometimes he used it for good, and sometimes he used it for raw power. But he understood that the business of politics and public service is all about relationships, and he focused on that.”

Former Gov. James McGreevey said the same thing, unprompted. “For Steve, it was all about personal relationships. That’s what drove him.”

And what an oversized personality it was. Adubato made his headquarters in the North Ward Center, a beautiful old mansion with sweeping wooden staircases that once housed a private school. If you were summoned, you came to see him, and that rule held for governors and senators, prosecutors and CEO’s.

He escorted them to his dining room, with its portrait of Machiavelli, and very often a Puccini opera floating in from somewhere. He made phone calls to powerful people, with the speaker phone on, and his subject unaware that others were listening. Adubato got a kick out of it, showing off his connections.

If you expected to talk during one of these meetings, he soon relieved you of that delusion. At most, he would leave a blank in his sentence and prod you to fill it. “And I care about what? Children, right?” Always, a few aides were seated at the table as props, nodding when he signaled them.

Christie made several pilgrimages, starting when he was U.S Attorney. “I never had a serious discussion with him on the phone,” Christie said. “He would call and ask when I could come see him. You were always going to the North Ward Center. He was never coming to me.”

He was not a subtle fellow. When he needed money for his programs, the source of his power, he was ferocious, especially when it came to his pride and joy, the Robert Treat Academy, a charter school that’s been a huge success, and serves mostly Latino families.

McGreevey visited the charter school shortly after he was elected governor, and was greeted by a full assembly.

“I walk in, and he had all these adorable well-scrubbed kids holding up signs saying, ‘Show me the money,’” McGreevey recalled, laughing. “And they screamed it at me!”

He was a nightmare boss who yelled at employees and expected them to be on call always. His son, the TV broadcaster Steve Jr., says he was at least a rough with his three children. “When it came to us, he was just tough and he was relentless,” he says.

DiVincenzo says he was among the few people who banged heads with Adubato when he had to. “All he wanted to do was help people,” said DiVincenzo. “But it was tough. We fought for 45 years because nobody else wanted to take him on and say ‘No.’”

For decades, Adubato held court on Sunday mornings, calling his staff together for meetings that started promptly at 8 a.m. It started in his basement, then moved to restaurants as the group expanded.

“You could not miss it, and you could not be late,” DiVincenzo said. “It was his church.”

On election day, the machine shows its stuff. The volunteers are called together early. They each have lists of doors to knock on, and they report back at the 10 a.m. meeting, the 3 p.m. meeting, and the 6 p.m. meeting, where they were badgered by district captains. Did you knock on Mrs. Garcia’s door? Was her adult daughter home, and did she agree to vote? There were charts and lists, an operation with 500 foot soldiers in a big election.

“You got to know every house in your district,” says Mo Butler, who volunteered for Adubato before serving as Mayor Cory Booker’s chief of staff. “It got to the point where I’d knock on doors, and they’d invite me in for dinner. That was the genius of Steve’s model.”

From his base in north Newark, Adubato managed to churn up such huge margins that regional and state politicians were eager to kiss his ring as well, in hope of getting his help. Christie visited Adubato in his first day in office.

“Steve was a Democrat and parties mattered to him, but power mattered to him more,” Christie said. “So, I showed up at Robert Treat the day after I beat Jon Corzine and what does he have for me? The blue fleece that three years later became famous. He had it ready with my name. I’m confident he had one made for Corzine, too, just in case.”

To me, Adubato’s passing marks a great loss. It’s not just his body of work, the programs he started. It was his inclusive style of politics, now vanished from this earth, the instinct to throw his arms wide, to build bridges across every fault line. He was the first white political player to endorse Ken Gibson as Newark’s first Black mayor in 1970, and he’s been at it ever since.

He threw an annual Irish/Italian party at North Ward Center, and it was packed to the walls with every race and ethnicity under the sun, Democrats and Republicans. Kids would sing, adults would take turns roasting each other, with wine and food in abundance.

Adubato always made a corny speech about American unity, and in those moments, it felt like everyone was pulling in the same direction. He made everyone feel that our good faith differences were manageable. I’ll miss that.

Caraballo made peace with Adubato eventually and became a regular again at the North Ward Center. “The truth is I was proud to help Steve in some of the things he did, like Robert Treat,” Caraballo says. “You had to see him around kids. It was genuine. Whatever you thought of him as a hard-ass politician, whenever I saw him around kids, I knew I was dealing with someone who really cared.”

McGreevey remembers his toughest moment, after he resigned the governorship in 2004 and famously came out as a “gay American.”

“Steve called me up and said, ‘I want to take you out to dinner,’” McGreevey recalls. “We were telling stories and laughing and eating pasta. At the end of the night, it was just me and him, and he put his arm around me, and I get choked up remembering this. He said, ‘At the end of the day, you believed you could make New Jersey a better place, and you did your best.’ In a really difficult period of my life, he offered me friendship and fellowship.”

Big Steve died on Oct. 13, at age 87. He is survived by his family, his friends, and by thousands of people in Newark who are grateful for his help over the last half century.

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Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.