DOVER – Things were awfully wild here a few months ago during a hotly-contested Democratic primary for mayor.

In the end, James Dodd, a former mayor, beat incumbent Carolyn Blackman and Ed Correa rather easily. Dodd got about 50 percent of the vote, a healthy number in a three-way race.

With the primary fading into history, Dodd and his supporters – winners always have a lot of supporters – jammed into the One-11 bar on Blackwell Street for a Monday night fundraiser with the fall election in mind.

Dodd, a veteran politician, said what veteran politicians are wont to say:

“I don’t take anything for granted.”

Of course not.

Then again, there is no one running on the Republican line in this very-Democratic town. But there is an independent, Dennis Touhey, whose ballot slogan is Time for Touhey. Catchy? Perhaps.

Pablo Fonseca, Dodd’s political consultant, stressed how things have changed.

“Six months, what a difference it makes,” he said, noting that back in February, Dodd was challenging an incumbent mayor. Not only that, he was running as a Democrat after losing four years ago when he ran as an independent.

Local Democratic politics was different then and the key difference here was that Dodd went the independent route in 2019 because he didn’t have the support of Morris County Democrats.

This year he does, a point punctuated by the presence at the fundraiser of Amalia Duarte, the county Democratic chair.

Fonseca put it this way:

“It feels so good to be on the line.”

Dodd said he was gratified to have Fonseca on board. He said the veteran consultant originally said he doesn’t do campaigns any more. But he would make an exception in the case of Dodd and Dover.

The rest is, as they say, history.

Dodd won the primary and is ready, he said, “to turn the town around.”

Dover, by Morris County standards, is not an affluent town, but there has been some redevelopment of late, some of which goes back to Dodd’s earlier tenure as mayor.

During the primary, Dodd talked about a town deteriorating in many ways under Blackman. He complained about empty stores downtown, higher taxes and chaos in town hall in the form of job losses and service cuts.

Rep. Mikie Sherrill, who now represents Dover after last year’s redistricting, was on hand to give Dodd a boost. Sherrill tends to give credibility to any event she attends.

She said that after a conversation with Dodd, his passion for the town really came through.

An open question is what will voters who did not back Dodd in the primary do in November. They made up about 50 percent of the Democratic vote last June.

Dodd was optimistic about bringing all Democrats back into the fold, saying his team is working on it.

“Little by little, we’ll build that bridge,” he said.