New Jersey is a corrupt state, whose Democratic leadership controls the state and patronage. The Democratic machine worked happily with Republican Governor Chris Christie.
The Working Families Party is fighting to upend the Democratic establishment, whose titular head is boss George Norcross, who happens to be a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club and the Democratic National Committee.
One WFP member, Sue Altman, was recently arrested and forcibly removed from a public hearing.
Altman previously lived in New York, where she was a founding member of NYSAPE, the group that fights high-stakes testing.
The confrontation was brief but explosive, and it laid bare the deepening fault lines within the Democratic Party in one of America’s bluest states.
New Jersey state troopers singled out Sue Altman, the leader of the left-leaning Working Families Alliance, grabbed her by the arms and forcibly removed her from a standing-room-only State Senate hearing on corporate tax breaks.
She was led past her main political rival, George E. Norcross III, a Democratic power broker who was at the hearing to testify in support of an $11 billion economic incentive program that Ms. Altman had criticized harshly and that is the subject of state investigations and subpoenas.
The imagery and its aftermath have roiled Trenton, exposing a generational and philosophical rift between progressive and mainstream Democrats that is mirrored nationwide…
Images of the clash were shared widely on social media — including by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a Democratic presidential candidate — amplifying tensions between the Democratic factions that control the state government: lawmakers aligned with the progressive first-term governor, Philip D. Murphy, and those, including the powerful State Senate president, who are linked to Mr. Norcross…
Her outspokenness about corporate tax breaks and her decision to live in Camden, a city seen as the Norcross family’s inviolable power base, made her a ready target for opponents long before the contentious Senate hearing.
Ms. Altman regularly spars with the powers-that-be on Twitter and seems to revel in the role of outside agitator. Barely a week into her job as the alliance’s director, she participated in a demonstration where protesters stood near an inflatable pig handing out fake million-dollar bills stamped with Mr. Norcross’s face.
She credits her years on the basketball court with making her comfortable in the political scrum. After leading her college team at Columbia University in scoring, she played professionally in Ireland and Germany. She went on to teach and coach at Blair Academy before studying at Oxford, where she also played basketball.
“You’re going to get booed,” she said. “You still have to make your foul shots.”
She is flirting with the possibility of making a primary run against Donald Norcross. “I haven’t ruled it out,” she said, despite taking no concrete steps toward a campaign…“She doesn’t have to stay here,” said Ronsha Dickerson, 42, an African-American mother of six who works for an organization that has called for a moratorium on new charter schools in Camden. “But she’s chosen this space to really be committed to making change.”
Sue Altman is an island of decency in dirty corrupt State run by the cynical Democratic Party of thug bosses. She should run and give us an option. When she announces, many of us will donate.
Camden could use the help of a smart activist like Sue Altman as the state has been represented by neo-liberal Democrats that have more in common with Republicans than left leaning Democrats. I hope she shakes up the party machine. One of the spoils of both Democrats and Republicans has been Camden, an extremely poor city that has been a easy target for school privatization. Hopefully, Altman and other progressives in the Democratic party can help nudge the party to the left
Democrats in certain New Jersey precincts have totally sold themselves to Christie and other Republicans
Corruption in the Democratic Party is not limited to New Jersey.
deep truth: in too many cases the choice of being a Democrat serves only as camouflage
The fact that i never heard of Philip Norcross after 27 yrs as a NJ’an speaks either to my naivete despite being rather politically-aware, or perhaps it’s just cuz I live in North Cental Jersey, so am unschooled on the Camden party wing. But I moved here from NYC well aware of NJ’s eons-long old-style Dem Party boss machinations—(despite our 8-yr romance w/Reps [Christie])—currently [& long] spearheaded by Sweeney [not Murphy] Happy to see Norcross comes from a union background, yet wondering what that means in the context of corp tax breaks which have been shown to garner NJ negative jobs [so he’s a sell-out?].
It’s hard to find actual progressives in this blue state—tho I’ll stand by our many liberal laws any day & glad we’re blue—threading the needle as one does among old-style Dem political bosses like Sweeney, & neoliberal/ wannabe progressives like newcomer Murphy, & back-stabbers like Norross appears to be [union background, pro-harmful corp tax breaks]… Maybe Sue Altman? Go, Sue!!