John T. Gregorio

Gregorio was born in Staten Island and moved to Linden in 1949 after serving in the United States Navy as a radar man. He was elected to the General Assembly, where he served from 1976 to 1978 and then moved up to the State Senate where he was in office starting in 1978 and served as chair of the Senate Labor, Industry, and Professions Committee. In a June 1983 special election, Raymond Lesniak won the seat Gregorio was forced to vacate. Gregorio asked Lesniak, his successor in the Senate, to pursue the possibility of getting a pardon. Governor of New Jersey Thomas Kean granted the pardon in January 1990 on his last day as governor, which allowed Gregorio to re-enter the world of politics. In the June 1990 primary, Gregorio won the Democratic nomination for mayor and was elected again as mayor by overwhelming margins. After serving 33 years as mayor and never having lost a political race before, Gregorio said "I have no regrets. There comes a time. You can't stay in office forever" and blamed his loss by fewer than 100 votes to a lack of sufficient campaigning. After his son was charged in 2007 with kidnapping two men who had been harassing his teenage daughter, Gregorio had no regrets about the arrest saying "he did what any father would do" and he "should have given him a medal". ==References==