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NEW JERSEY COPS n JULY 2014 35 FOLLOW THE LEADERS... A Fighter and a Brother Count on Marc Kovar to be a straight shooter and relentless leader who as NJ State PBA Executive Vice-President won’t be afraid to mix it up. n BY MITCHELL KRUGEL Searching for the right analogy or the best way to characterize how Marc Kovar fits into the new NJ State PBA Leadership takes us through the postings on Wikipedia, the pages of popular culture and the analogies to life’s dynamic duos. In this new NJ State PBA regime, it appears that the Executive Vice-President should flaunt a catcher’s toughness combined with the guile of a helmsman and the persona of one of the boys or girls. But as the running buddy, consigliore and partner to the affable, clever and inventive Pat Colligan, expect Kovar to be a bit of the Sundance Kid. Those who know Kovar know he’s better when he moves – running a Collective Bargaining Meeting in the morning, serving the Legal Protection, Survivor & Welfare or Legislative committees later in the day then getting up in the middle of the night because one his Local members was involved in an incident that needs the State Delegate’s help. Those who don’t know Kovar should know that his first exposure to the PBA came as a rookie cop when he started attending Passaic Local 14 meetings back in the 1990s that could have been held at a Wild West saloon. Or at least that’s the way Kovar remembers them: older members dominating the conversation, and when debating didn’t render any decision, the meetings would come to blows - actual fisticuffs. No wonder that considering Kovar’s initial exposure to the union ways, his PBA DNA has developed into that of a fighter. Make no mistake: He’s the Sundance Kid in full formal dress. “When I first became a PBA member, back then, most guys retired at 65. We had some real tough, intimidating cops on the job,” Kovar recounted. “Just because I was a young kid, I wasn’t afraid to tell off the old-timers. I spoke up and won over a few of them.” Kovar has been winning them over thusly for 20-plus years, the past 11 as a State Delegate and the past several as a member of the NJ State PBA Executive Board. Apparently, he did likewise with President Colligan. On that Sunday evening, June 22, Colligan had just found out he was going to the be the next NJ State PBA President, and his first instinct was to find a partner, a running mate, a yin to his yang, to be Executive Vice-President. “I started looking down the list of PBA board members and as soon as I came to Marc Kovar’s name, I stopped,” President Colligan explained. “Usually, there is a succession order and some time to make this choice. We don’t have that. We’re in the biggest fight in the history of the NJ State PBA, and I knew with the amount of time Marc devotes to the organization, he would get in the fight as quickly as possible.” No reason to pull punches Nobody gets to such a lofty position in the state’s most powerful union without the good fortune of having somebody mentor them. Kovar counts several advisors/counselors/tutors on this list, from Tony Wieners and Keith Dunn to former PBA President Mike Madonna to current NJ State PBA Special ProjCONTINUED ON PAGE 36