The gun-toting, barrel-chested former Marine had first adopted the security role during Newark's 1967 uprising - five days of protests and a deadly occupation of the city by police and the National Guard following the police beating of a Black cab driver. During the uprising, Imperiale organized patrols of his predominantly white neighborhood to keep "the riots" out.
Soon, Imperiale became a hero of white backlash politics. His opposition to police reform earned him widespread support from law enforcement. And his fight against Black housing development in Newark's North Ward delighted many of his neighbors. By the end of the 1970s, Hollywood was making a movie based on his activities.
Actress Frances Fisher arrives to speak at a downtown rally in Los Angeles, California on May 19, 2016, to bring attention to voter suppression.
Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
After serving as an independent in both houses of the state legislature, Imperiale became a Republican in 1979. Two years later, he campaigned with Kean. Once in office, the new governor named Imperiale director of a new one-man state Office of Community Safety - an appointment often interpreted as reward for Imperiale's leadership of the ballot efforts in Newark, but stymied when Democrats refused to fund the position.
Outcome and legacyDespite Kean's slim margin of victory, Democrats at the time were careful not to claim that Republican voter suppression efforts had decided the election. (In 2016, the former Democratic candidate claimed they did indeed make the difference.)
Rather, the state and national Democratic committees brought suit against the Republican National Committee to ensure it couldn't again use such methods anywhere. For nearly 40 years - through amendments and challenges - the resulting consent decree helped curtail voter suppression tactics.
[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation's newsletter.]
Since the decree's expiration in 2018, Republicans have ramped up their recruitment of poll watchers for the 2020 presidential election. Last November, Trump campaign lawyer Justin Clark - calling the decree's absence "a huge, huge, huge, huge deal" for the party - promised a larger, better funded and "more aggressive" program of Election Day operations.
The Trump campaign is claiming, as Republicans did in 1981, that Democrats "will be up to their old dirty tricks" and has vowed to "cover every polling place in the country" with workers to ensure an honest election and reelect the president.
This November, Republican tactics in 1981 are worth remembering. They demonstrate that the safeguarding of polling places from supposedly fraudulent voters and of public places from Black bodies share not only a logic. They also share a history.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
