Terry DeHere's Political Career Ends Quicker Than His NBA One

Terry DeHere finished his college career as Seton Hall's all-time leading scorer, second team All-American, the 1993 Big East Player of the Year, and was selected 13th overall in the NBA draft that year.

By 1999, he was out of the Association. He returned to Jersey City, where he once played for legendary Bob Hurley at St. Anthony's HS, and became entrenched in the community as a restaurant owner and philanthropist.

With star power and local ties, politics seemed a likely path.

After an unsuccessful bid for a council seat in 2001, DeHere won a seat on the city's board of elections in 2007.

Last night, quicker than his NBA career ended, DeHere got trounced in his re-election bid.

Crushed.

Sterling Waterman - 6,946 votes
*Angel Valentin - 6,453 votes
Carol Lester - 3,848 votes
Sebastian D'Amico - 3,391 votes
*L. Terry Dehere - 2,199 votes
*Gerald McCann - 2,199 votes

(* = incumbent)

DeHere ran on a slate with Gerald McCann, the city's former mayor, that was opposed by the local teacher's union after they (McCann & DeHere) "voted against a teachers contract that called for roughly 4 percent raises for the next four years."

With the state's new governor going head-on with the teachers unions as a whole (namely due to his plea to them to implement a salary freeze for one year), "voters rejected school budgets in about half of the state's school districts, a dramatic drop from the 74% that were passed in 2009." Jersey City seems to be an exception to the rule, and DeHere ended up paying the price for trying to be fiscally sound at the expense of an apparently electorally influential group.

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