Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't

In most towns, the citizenry gives a new public official a decent period of time to prove himself or herself before they start storming town hall with flaming torches, like the villagers in Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein."

That's in most towns. But this is Edison.

The torches were lit even before Jun Choi, Edison's first Korean American mayor, took the oath of office on New Year's Day.

And they haven't gone out since.

Choi didn't win office with a mandate. He won by a very slim margin over challenger William Stephens. But it was enough to get him elected. There were enough people in Edison - and they weren't all Asian Americans - who had enough after 12 years of George Spadoro and the status quo.

You remember George Spadoro. He was the mayor who never came to council meetings. The mayor who had no idea what happened to the Edison Tower Trust Fund money. The mayor who couldn't be reached for comment. The mayor who sometimes couldn't be reached at all, unless it was for a self-promoting photo op.

And there are those who just couldn't wait to see Choi fail. They were out for blood from the beginning. They criticized him for bringing in outside consultants to find out just what the state of Edison's finances were. When the consultants issued a scathing appraisal of how business had been done in the past, the critics attacked the consultants.

Choi ran for office to get rid of the old guard and the old ways of doing business. And those who have the most to lose are his most vocal critics.

The police department had a horrendous public relations problem when Choi took over. A small group of less-than-pristine officers had managed to embroil themselves in a variety of embarrassing incidents.

Choi's response was to assign a respected officer to the newly created division in the police department to ferret out problems before they reached newspaper headline status.

When problems arose after a Fourth of July incident involving the arrest of Rajnikant Parikh, a member of the Indian community, the mayor assigned three officers as liaisons to the Indian community.

He rightly refused to attend a meeting chaired by Pradip "Peter" Kothari, the self-proclaimed Al Sharpton of the Indian community, because he knew it would turn into a cop-bashing session.

He praised Edison police officers for protecting the rights of Indian Americans to protest what they claimed was police brutality during a torrid afternoon in front of town hall several weeks ago.

What he got for his efforts was a slap in the face from some members of the Edison Police Department. No one bothered to tell Choi or Police Chief George Mieczkowski that Parikh, the focal point of the Aug. 2 protest, was going to be arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for being in the country illegally.

Both Choi and the chief said after the arrest they had no knowledge it was coming. And that was true. Because someone in the police department with an ax to grind decided the mayor and the chief shouldn't know about it.

Mieczkowski called for an internal investigation to determine whether there was a break in the chain of command.

That led to the fiasco of Edison police officers and their supporters holding yet another rally outside town hall Monday afternoon. They called for the mayor's resignation because Choi had publicly announced the internal investigation into the ICE arrest.

Things are getting ugly in Edison. And unfortunately, it may get even uglier. If the past few weeks aren't enough evidence, check out the vitriolic comments in the Edison forum on nj.com

But here's a news flash for the discontented.

The mayoral primary election of 2005 is over. So is the mayor election of 2005. Choi won. The malcontents who have been calling for his head for months would better serve the residents of Edison Township if they came up with some constructive ideas for a change.