Even as Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker has tried to position himself as a champion for the urban poor, ABC News reported otherwise: “For Cory Booker, water crisis awakens ghosts of past Newark water scandal,”

“The latest figures from federal observers show that children in Newark’s Essex County are in fact nearly four times more likely to have elevated blood lead levels than those in Flint, where cost-cutting measures resulted in lead and other toxins seeping into the drinking water supply,” reported ABC News’ Lucien Bruggeman. “As a result, city officials handed out filters more than eight months ago. Following recent tests that showed elevated levels of lead in the drinking water of two houses using the filters, the EPA recommended Friday that local officials in Newark distribute bottled water to residents.”

Bruggeman said this troubled condition could haunt his 2020 presidential aspirations.

“As a presidential candidate, Cory Booker has made environmental protections a central tenet of his social justice platform. As a United States senator, he emerged as a leading voice on the front lines of safe water for urban-dwellers,” Bruggeman wrote. “But a growing water quality crisis gripping Newark, New Jersey, is bringing fresh attention and scrutiny of Booker’s own record when he was that city’s mayor — at a time when the water system was marred by scandal. The two crises may be separated by time, but as images spread of Newark officials handing out bottled water to residents grappling with dangerous water pollution, ongoing water problems could prove increasingly uncomfortable for his 2020 presidential campaign.”