Behind the Headlines
NJ State PBA President Pat Colligan and Executive Vice-President
Marc Kovar surmise the work that led to a momentous Year One of
their leadership:
Legislators praise PBA support on Election Day
The first initiative
President
Colligan
announced
targeted
building, or rebuilding,
relationships with every
senator and assembly rep
in the state legislature. At
the time he and Kovar
didn’t know where this
effort would lead exactly, but a big payoff came with the impact members made on June 2 by staging a big effort to support PBA-centric
candidates who needed help to win their primary elections.
“Pat’s first goal was to meet all the legislators in six months,” Kovar
said. “It wasn’t an easy task.”
Said Colligan: “I wanted to meet them on their home turf. Meeting
them in Trenton is cheating, so we wanted to sit with them in their
hometowns and have a slice of pizza. We had to adjust to a year
because some of the meetings didn’t happen as soon as we had
hoped.”
When nearly 100 members showed up at the PBA office on Primary
Election Day to work the phones, word spread to the point where state
legislators came to Woodbridge to say thanks.
“Now, we have some good relationships,” Kovar added. “If there’s a
bill coming up, we can send texts to people to find out if they are voting
our way. For the general election, I’d like to see a couple hundred
members show up.”
PBA members come to Trenton for a day they will
never forget
Another brainstorm that came up 20 minutes or so after taking
office called for PBA Day at the state legislature on Oct. 16. Colligan
asked Locals to send groups to attend committee meetings and a general assembly meeting after lunch. The idea was for legislators to see
women and men clad in their PBA shirts walking the halls and letting
them know the organization was going to be a presence.
“I didn’t sleep the night before, thinking, ‘What if we had a party and
nobody was going?