Senator Cory Book (D-NJ) is one of the Democrats who has thrown his hat into the Presidential ring. Politico is reporting that during his tenure of Newark, NJ, this happened:
A longtime friend and adviser to former Mayor Cory Booker allegedly directed the head of Newark’s troubled watershed to solicit political contributions from agency contractors in the late 2000s, according to documents reviewed by POLITICO.
The previously unreported allegations of unethical behavior, included in a 2015 FBI memo, represent the newest twist in a decade of political turmoil surrounding the city’s water system, and come as New Jersey’s largest city grapples with a massive lead contamination crisis that has forced tens of thousands of residents to rely on bottled water for drinking and cooking. The allegations were presented in April as evidence in a separate criminal case.
While Newark’s lead contamination crisis began in earnest under the city’s current mayor, Ras Baraka, Booker — New Jersey’s junior senator who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president — presided over major administrative problems within the city’s water system that were further exacerbated by his appointees, according to interviews and the documents reviewed by POLITICO.
There are, of course, denials by those involved, disputes about the accuser being someone with a gambling addiction, etc. Politico emphasizes Booker does not appear to be involved.
However, if he appointed those in trouble, it at least points to a weakness in selecting leaders. If he hands out technical leadership positions to political allies as rewards, well, that strikes me as incompetent. Consider this from the local Sierra Club:
“When you turn your water company and your water corporation into a dumping ground for political hacks, this is what happens,” said Jeff Tittel, senior chapter director of New Jersey’s Sierra Club. “This is the kind of stuff that’s gone on there for far too long. And the outcome is we’re poisoning our children.”
Under Booker, the watershed corporation’s executive director was Linda Watkins-Brashear, a one-time campaign volunteerwho pleaded guilty in late 2015 to accepting nearly $1 million in bribes and kickbacks from contractors as well as an employee of the corporation. She was sentenced in 2017 to eight years in federal prison. Eight other officials were charged in the scandal.
The watershed’s corporate counsel at the time was Elnardo Webster, a friend and former law firm colleague of Booker’s as well as the treasurer and finance chairman to his mayoral campaigns.
Neither Booker nor Webster was charged with wrongdoing, but the unseemly tangle of patronage hires and kickbacks at an agency responsible for maintaining safe drinking water for Newark was a stain on Booker’s tenure as mayor, which ran from 2006 to 2013.
So far, Booker has not begun climbing the polls, so it seems more likely he’ll be following Gillibrand off the nomination stage. But it’s a real lesson that who you pick for important agencies had better be qualified, and not just be someone you owe a favor. Does Booker understand that?
