Police seek 2 in bias election fliers found in Hoboken (VIDEO)

HOBOKEN -- Hoboken police released video footage Monday showing two "persons of interest" in the case of a flier placed on door steps and car windshields associating a Sikh mayoral candidate with terrorism.

A flier left on car windshields Friday night in Hoboken, associated a mayoral candidate, Councilman Ravi Bhalla, a Sikh, with terrorism.

The fliers included the message, "Don't let TERRORISM take over our town!" in red block letters above a picture of the candidate, Ravi Bhalla, an Indian-American born in New Jersey. Sikhism is a religion founded on the Indian subcontinent  during the 15th Century by a guru who had been born into a Hindu family but rejected certain tenets of that faith.

The Hoboken Police Department released two separate video clips, both of them black-and-white.

The first is 34 seconds and shows two men on an unidentified sidewalk holding stacks of papers, presumably the fliers.

One of them is seen dropping one or more of the papers on the front steps of an apartment building below an awning.

The other clip, just 12 seconds, shows one of the two men walking with a casual gait on an unidentified sidewalk, again holding a stack of papers.

Hoboken Police Chief Kenneth Ferrante said his department was investigating the incident as a potential bias crime, including bias intimidation or harassment. The conduct also violates a city ordinance prohibiting the placement of campaign or other types of fliers on vehicles or public property.

The fliers surfaced in Hoboken days after a separate campaign incident in Edison, when anti-Indian and anti-Chinese mailers were sent to residents of that township, where nearly half the population is Asian-American.

The "Make Edison Great Again" mailer pictured two Asian board of education candidates with a "deport" stamp. It drew national attention for its use of President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign slogan.

The Hoboken fliers were concentrated in the mid-town section of the Mile-Square City, in the area of Hudson Street, near the waterfront, said Ferrante. He did not know how many had been circulated.

The Hoboken fliers appear to be a modified version of a campaign mailer sent out previously by another one of the six mayoral candidates in the city, Councilman Michael DeFusco.

The original flier from the DeFusco camp charged that Bhalla had a conflict of interest involving his law firm and the city's water utility. Those allegations remained on Friday's modified version.

A press release from the police department accompanying the video clips said a representative of the DeFusco campaign reported seeing the men with the fliers at about 8:40 p.m. on Friday.

"Members of his campaign observed an unknown individual disseminating altered Defusco campaign literature," police said. "The campaign literature now had an added portion that read 'Don't let TERRORISM take over our Town' over a picture of Ravi Bhalla, another Hoboken Mayoral candidate. When Defusco campaign members realized the alarming and inappropriate change to their official campaign literature they immediately called police and began to gather up the fliers from the vehicles they were placed on."

On Monday, the president of the Hudson County chapter of the NAACP, Eugene Drayton, issued a statement relating the Hoboken flier to Trump campaign rhetoric.

"During the 2016 presidential election, we saw the current president use hateful, racist and anti-gender tactics to fuel his campaign to attract and encourage America's most hateful groups," Drayton stated. "All of his negativity has allowed others to copy his hateful mannerisms."

The American Federation of Teachers union New Jersey president, Donna M. Chiera,  issued a statement Monday condemning the Hoboken and Edison incidents.

"These racist and anti-immigrant materials are absolutely horrible, but not surprising in today1s environment," Chiera stated.

DeFusco was among several city officials to condemn the doctored flier. He issued a statement saying his campaign had nothing to do with it.

"I called Councilman Bhalla tonight to assure him that although we disagree on many issues, we can stand united against this kind of racism infecting our city," stated DeFusco, who is seeking to become Hoboken's first openly gay mayor in Hoboken's non-partisan municipal elections on Tuesday.

Bhalla would be Hoboken's first Sikh mayor if elected, and his campaign website says he became New Jersey's first Sikh elected official when he won a seat on the Hoboken City Council in 2009. Reacting to the incident on social media over the weekend, the Bhalla campaign asserted, "we won't let hate win."

"No matter your race, ethnicity you are welcome here in our City," Bhalla tweeted. "As Mayor, I will work hard to keep it that way."

Some Hoboken residents have been under the mistaken impression that Bhalla is a Muslim, and the doctored flier was distributed only days after last week's deadly attack in New York City, which authorities say was carried out by a Muslim immigrant from Uzbekistan who declared his allegiance to the Islamic State, or ISIS.

Gujari Singh, a spokesman for the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, described Sikhism as, "its own independent and sovereign faith, with its own prophets, religious canon, and code of conduct, and was founded by Guru Nanak in the late 15th century in Punjab, South Asia."

Tuesday's election will choose a successor to Mayor Dawn Zimmer, who announced in June she would not seek a third four-year term, and instead endorsed Bhalla.

Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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