Gene Etchison

IRVINGTON - All of the incumbents won here, including North WardAt -Large Councilman David Lyons wins Councilman David Lyons, who eked out a victory over tough challenger Gene Etchison, a Newark police detective.

Often the lone dissenter on Irvington’s City Council, Lyons won 451 votes (51% ) to Etchison’s 427 votes (49%).

Lyons’s West Ward running mate, Keith White, lost to Council President John Sowell. In that ward, the incumbent earned 345 votes (60%) to White’s 222 (38%). A third candidate in the race, Cedric Hunter, earned just 9 votes.

A three-term incumbent, Lyons received the backing of Sen. Ronald Rice (D-Essex) in his second close win over Etchison in four years.

North Ward Councilman David Lyons in his campaign headquarters on Monday night. 

IRVINGTON - Gene Etchison approaches a sprawling old house on the corner of Clinton Avenue and tells the resident when he steps outside, "I love your grass. It’s cut real nice. I love to lie down in the grass, that’s why I always notice it when I go by here."

The man shakes the candidate's hand. He knows it’s the day before Election Day.

He confesses he has a problem with the way Mayor Wayne Smith’s administration is running the town, and he tells Etchison he’d like to go to Town Hall and tell them they need to improve the sanitation department - and everything else for that matter, but he just doesn’t have the energy anymore.

Sen. Ron Rice (D-Essex)Sen. Ronald Rice (D-Essex) hopes his written request to Attorney General Anne Milgram for an investigative audit of Irvington, cc’d to voters, will give North Ward Councilman David Lyons a leg up in Tuesday’s municipal elections.

A vocal critic of Mayor Wayne Smith’s management of the Essex County town and often the lone dissenting vote on the council, 12-year incumbent Lyons is in a competitive race with Newark Det. Gene Etchison.

Lyons has questions about his town’s obligation to pay the state back $8 million over a 20-year period, a result of the Smith administration’s bonding without the permission of the state Department of Community Affairs.

Rice has the same questions.

IRVINGTON - Fighting for re-election against Newark Police Detective Gene Etchison, North Ward Councilman David Lyons says he will stop companing when Irvington improves.

Councilman David LyonsIRVINGTON - North Ward Councilman David Lyons and Gene Etchison started out as friends and political allies, with Etchison drawn to the older man’s fireball activism.

As president of the local tenants association, Lyons didn’t care who he offended in his drive for better housing, and he took that attitude into a run for City Council in 1996.

"We used to go door to door together," recalled Etchison of Lyons’ first campaign. "I was like his little brother."

That didn’t last.

Lyons won. But though he successfully backed Etchison for district leader, Etchison then ran against Lyons with the muscle of South Ward boss D. Bilal Beasley and Team Irvington behind him.Challenger Gene Etchison

The councilman took the challenge as a betrayal.

"When I see him around, we don’t talk, said Lyons. "I lost respect for him after that."

A police officer and Marine Corps veteran who is the godson of Assemblywoman Cleopatra Tucker, Etchison said it was only political inevitability that propelled him into the arena against a man he once admired, but whom he came to see as a chronic naysayer.

IRVINGTON - Council President John Sowell and Councilman David Lyons stepped up their attacks on each other this week, as each aggressively backs a candidate in the other’s ward in the upcoming Irvington Council race.

Sowell, an eight-year veteran of the council and friend of Mayor Wayne Smith, hopes Gene Etchison bumps Lyons off the council in north Irvington.

“Some people are tired of Lyons being condescending,” Sowell said of the 12-year council veteran. “His service is a combination of demagoguery, bad attendance and an inconsistent, contradictory voting record. I can’t tell you the number of people I meet who ask me, ‘When is this guy going to stop complaining?’”

Irvington Council President John SowellIRVINGTON - Shot in the leg as he walked out of a pizza parlor two years ago, Keith White instinctively ran for cover from the blast of the 9 mm going off next to him.

"I didn’t even know I’d been hit," says White. "I was hit an inch above my knee. No police came to the scene, no police came to the hospital to file a report. I drove myself to the hospital."

Standing on Durand Place outside the neighborhood firehouse this week, he’s wearing combat boots, a cap with the National Guard insignia on it and fatigues.

"I’ve lived in Irvington all my life and I haven’t seen the positives increase." says the 21-year old career counselor and retention specialist with the Guard who’s been stationed stateside his three years in the service.