Grassroots activists in New Jersey are furious at what they say is Sen. Cory Booker being inconsistent in what he says in Iowa versus what he does at home. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo Booker’s problem with New Jersey progressives

TRENTON, N.J. — Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) uses progressive rhetoric on the campaign trail to rail against Immigration and Custom Enforcement policies and promote economic fairness. But when it comes to scandals engulfing Democrats in his home state, Booker’s been mostly silent.

On Friday, he’ll be back in New Jersey for a $2,800-per-head fundraiser co-hosted by two of the state’s political bosses anathema to many in the Democratic base: Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo, who oversees a jail in Booker’s native county that houses undocumented immigrants and has been cited for poor conditions, and South Jersey power broker George Norcross, who has been accused of crony capitalism by progressive activists.


Grassroots activists in New Jersey are furious at what they say is Booker being inconsistent in what he says in Iowa versus what he does at home, warning of “progressive wrath” to come if Booker’s campaign ever breaks out of the pack. That may set Booker up for opposition from the very people who on paper would be most likely to support him.

“To me, it highlights the pattern that power brokers in New Jersey just don’t have the politics of the Democratic base,” said Sue Altman, executive director of the New Jersey Working Families Alliance. “That collision is a real thing, and Booker is living in that right now.”

Last week, 21 progressive organizations — including Altman’s — signed onto a letter urging Booker to cancel the fundraiser, citing its “inconsistency with your national posture.”

“We admire your stance on ICE, your pledge not to take PAC money, and your advocacy for the underserved, and yet we feel that these convictions are undermined by your acceptance of a fundraiser hosted by George Norcross and Joe DiVincenzo,” the letter read.

Booker hasn’t canceled, and he’s given no indication that he will.

In a statement, Booker presidential campaign spokesperson Sabrina Singh said the senator is committed to fighting for justice.

“Cory is the same person he has always been, someone who has never hesitated to stand up and fight tough fights, fight injustice, and work to build a more fair country,” Singh said.

New Jersey, notorious for corruption and hardball politics, has long had a boss-driven political culture. Power brokers — some, like DiVincenzo, who are elected and some, like Norcross, who are not — run formidable “machines” with huge influence on public jobs and contracts. Some of their power stems from the fact that Democratic organizations in most counties control the “line” on the ballot that places their preferred candidates in the same column or row with all the other elected officials, usually in a prominent place on the ballot.

Getting anything substantial done in New Jersey usually takes working with these bosses, who have huge sway over large swaths of state lawmakers' votes.

Chris Christie, the state's former Republican governor, worked closely with DiVincenzo and Norcross for accomplishments such as overhauling the state’s public worker retirement benefit programs that would ultimately fuel his own unsuccessful presidential aspirations. Democrats who run afoul of those machines can find themselves crushed in a primary or general election.

But as Christie eventually found out, New Jersey politics turned into a liability on the national scene. Talked up for years as a top tier 2016 Republican presidential candidate, his star fell thanks to the Bridgegate scandal in which his staffers and appointees orchestrated the shutdown of access lanes to the George Washington Bridge as retribution for a Democratic mayor refusing to endorse his 2013 reelection.

At campaign events outside of New Jersey, Booker has decried ICE policies, saying they “don’t reflect our values” and has introduced legislation to block local authorities from partnering with ICE. He’s sworn off corporate PAC contributions and has talked about the “games” Wall Street played that created a “rigged system that hurt my community.”

Booker didn’t rise from an anti-machine councilman in Newark, N.J., to the city’s mayor to U.S. senator solely on grassroots support. In the years after “Street Fight,” the documentary about his unsuccessful 2002 mayoral campaign against the Newark machine run by then-Mayor Sharpe James that helped make him a national name, Booker made nice with local and state party officials.

In 2006, when he ran successfully for mayor of New Jersey’s largest city, he strolled into City Hall beating back a nominal challenge by a state senator. As mayor, he championed Newark’s economic development and its charter schools. He did little to rub the bosses the wrong way, and even developed a close cross-aisle relationship with Christie. To this day, Booker rarely criticizes Christie, who left office as the most unpopular governor in New Jersey history.

When U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) died in 2013, most of New Jersey’s Democratic machine lined up to elevate Booker to the U.S. Senate, despite competition from two long-time congressmen and the speaker of the state Assembly.

SCANDALS AT HOME

Essex County earns more than $40 million annually from its ICE contract with the Essex County Correctional Facility in Newark. Activists were already protesting the fact the county — along with several others in New Jersey — had a contract with ICE. But then, the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General issued a scathing report earlier this month that cited a raft of poor conditions, including “unreported security incidents, food safety issues, and facility conditions that endanger detainee health” as well as inmate strip searches “with no justification documented.”

“I believe that Booker wants to make sure that the funnel of money keeps coming through, and that’s why he’s supporting Joe [DiVincenzo] right now,” said Carrine Murphy, a paralegal who has been protesting the use of county jails to house ICE detainees.

Booker isn’t being caught off guard by the criticism. Last August, while he was visiting a private immigrant detention facility in Elizabeth, a local television news reporter asked him if he would visit any county jail facilities .

“Am I going to go tomorrow? No. Am I going to go next week? No. Is this on my agenda of things to be investigated? Yes. Do my staff go and investigate these facilities? Yes,” he said.

The jails that house the most immigrant inmates are in northern New Jersey counties firmly controlled by Democrats: Essex, Hudson and Bergen. Booker’s campaign did not respond to a question about whether he has plans to visit any of them.

“I would like an elected official to say, when speaking of ICE contracts, that our jails are not meant to be making profits and we need to be following our constitution and our laws,” Murphy said. “And we need to end these contracts immediately.”

Anthony Puglisi, a spokesperson for Essex County, said the issues the inspector general found were immediately addressed. The DiVincenzo administration, he said, is taking steps to further improve conditions for inmates, including spending almost $600,000 on facility repairs, more than $300,000 on new food service positions, training and testing, and $50,000 on “to create an enhanced in-house inspection team to routinely review facility conditions and operations.”

Norcross is at the center of a much different scandal. A task force appointed by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy — with whom Norcross and his allies have feuded since Murphy took office last year — has alleged insider dealing and “sham” threats by Norcross-linked companies to move jobs out of state in order to qualify for hundreds of millions of tax incentives from the state.

The task force has also outlined how an attorney at the law firm of Philip Norcross, George Norross’ brother, wrote key passages of New Jersey’s tax incentive law that allegedly were written specifically to benefit the George Norcross-linked companies. Norcross’ other brother, U.S. Rep. Donald Norcross (D-N.J.), boasted in campaign materials that he “led the charge” for the tax credit law’s passage while a member of the state Legislature.

George Norcross has long held that the tax incentives were necessary to spur development in Camden, one of the most impoverished cities in the U.S., and that his insurance brokerage, Conner Strong & Buckelew, has taken the lead along with several companies he recruited to open offices there.

Dan Fee, a spokesperson for George Norcross, said in a statement that the progressive groups should “go home, read Roosevelt’s ‘Man in the Arena‘ speech and reconsider the choices they’ve made.

“Change doesn’t come from being a critic, change comes from ideas and action. They should try it, but until they do, they not only will be ignored by decision makers — they deserve to be,” said Fee.

New Jersey activists, in an email Monday, circulated their letter to Booker to progressive groups in Iowa, looking for them to sign on to it. Altman, of the Working Families Alliance, said that if Booker’s candidacy eventually breaks through, his relationship with political bosses at home will become a major issue.

“The most successful attacks against presidential candidates are ones that kind of get at their perceived weaknesses. And this does that ... So if he does break through I think it will have big ramifications for his run,” Altman said. “While New Jersey is probably the worst in the country when it comes to political power brokers, I think it kind of gets to the national story about what are the values of the Democratic Party. Who do our candidates serve, first and foremost? The candidates or their benefactors?”

But Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, was skeptical the attacks would hurt Booker, since he’s not the person ultimately in charge of the jails or tax incentive programs. Booker’s long history as a Wall Street favorite is much more likely to be a vulnerability, Murray said.

“You have to be directly involved. This is why the Wall Street connections are significantly more of a threat to him if he starts rising in the field than anything else,” Murray said. That doesn’t mean people won’t be launching attacks on him about being hypocritical. But the likelihood of them sticking in any way that makes a difference is low. And that’s true of any other kind of guilty by association attack you could make on any of the candidates.”