Star Ledger: City workers feel pushed to aid Booker.
With a fundraiser celebrating the first anniversary of his victory at the polls coming up next month, Newark Mayor Cory Booker has a message for city employees thinking about buying tickets to the event: Don’t bother.
Booker, who was elected on a platform of reforming city government, said he plans to return any political contributions from city employees that find their way into his campaign coffers.
The mayor said he’s trying to change an old, poisonous tradition in city government where employees felt as if their jobs depended on stuffing their boss’s campaign treasury.
But some city employees say they are still feeling the pressure to raise money for the mayor’s campaign.
Reporters Mays and Schuppe go on to describe how some city workers are compelled to sell tickets to the aforementioned fundraiser. Still, as the article progresses, it seems that either some folks didn’t get the message that this kind of coercion is illegal:
McCarthy said he has spread the word through his top brass that an officer can only sell a ticket if he or she is off-duty, participating voluntarily and is not conducting business on city property. Anyone caught breaking those rules will be disciplined, he said.“We’re not going to shove tickets down people’s throats,” he said. “Your advancement or lack thereof in our agency will not be based on political contributions or selling of tickets.”
When he signed an executive order establishing the ban, Booker touted it as a bold step toward reforming city government.
Campaign records show Booker received $226,856 in contributions from 245 employees during the 2006 election cycle—just a portion of the record-smashing $7 million total he raised.
Booker said the new complaints show that workers still think there is pressure, even when there isn’t.
“We are trying to change a culture where tickets were stapled to paychecks. This culture will not change on a dime,” Booker said.
Is it Booker’s motivation to have city employees subtly encouraged to raise funds for him? I highly doubt it: this is the same mayor who was criticized for bringing in massive amounts of funding from outside the city to crush his opponent—why would he put the pressure on city workers to raise cash now?
This does look like some post-traumatic stress on the part of city workers from city workers, and just points to the long road ahead for this administration to get everyone on the same page.