Follow the Money

The stage is set for Trenton’s mayoral runoff on June 10. In Tuesday’s election, Eric Jackson (as generally expected) and Paul Perez (as generally unexpected) topped the field of six candidates. These two candidates claimed a little under 52% of the vote, while the remaining 4 shared the remaining 48%.

The results were pretty definitive, although the poor turnout – only 26.1% of the voters bothered to cast their ballot – can hardly be used by the winners to claim much of a mandate. Should the June runoff election see a similar turnout (as June 2010’s runoff  did) it is conceivable that our new mayor will be elected by a little over 13% of Trenton’s registered voters. Is this Democracy? Trenton style, I suppose.

The closing weeks of the election saw a great deal of mud being thrown against candidates. An incident two weekends ago, in which members of Eric Jackson’s campaign alleged a charge of assault against Paul Perez, threatened to run Perez’s campaign off the rails. Apparently, this was not the case, as Mr. Perez came in second by a very convincing margin. It remains to be seen, though, if reverberations from this controversy sparked on May 3 will continue to ripple to the runoff. We’ll see.

Another issue raised in the final weeks of the campaign likely did cause one candidate serious damage. News of an outside Political Action Committee (PAC) that independently paid for a direct mail and billboard campaign that specifically attacked Eric Jackson boomeranged on 4th place finisher James Golden. Golden was hurt by news that the principal funder of the “Better Education for Kids” PAC, David Tepper, had also made a direct donation to the joint campaign committee supporting Golden and his City Council slate. Further, published reports connect this PAC to support of Governor Chris Christie and the effort to further the growth of taxpayer-supported charter schools statewide, at the alleged expense of traditional public schools

It’s hard to estimate just how many votes that association cost Golden, but one has to assume it was damaging. According to the May 2 account by the Trentonian’s David Foster, he was taken by surprise by the billboard and attack campaign. “I’m not going to comment on it until I see the billboard and do a little further investigation. This is the first I’m hearing about this.”

This allowed the Jackson campaign to claim the high moral ground with great enthusiasm. Spokesperson Michael Walker enthusiastically contrasted the Jackson campaign and its financing with Golden’s. “Eric Jackson has the most grassroots support, the best vision, the best campaign organization, the most money, and he continues to connect with voters… It is unfortunate that Jim Golden has been caught red-handed accepting a campaign contribution from a billionaire hedge fund manager who does not mean our public school system any good.” Again, that surely had to hurt Jim Golden.

So, now that we are heading into the runoff, it is probably appropriate to look at connections that Eric Jackson is developing with his own group of Wall Street  hedge-fund managers, and the support they are providing his campaign. It is unclear what interest they have in Trenton’s affairs, and what prompted them to enter our mayoral campaign. However, I think if Michael Walker saw fit to raise questions about Jim Golden’s backers on behalf of the Jackson campaign, then certainly they should welcome attention paid to their own backers, and should be willing to answer questions about this support. It is quite illuminating when one follows the money.

On May 8, a “Report of Independent Expenditures” was filed with the NJ Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC) from a group called “The Mobilization Project,” with a Washington, DC Post Office Box as an address. This report states that in May of this year, the Project spent $25,300 on Canvassing efforts in support of Trenton’s Mayoral Election. This money went to two firms, one also located in DC and the other in Virginia.

This is the first report filed by this group with ELEC, and there is no other information about it on the state website. However, further search into the group reveals that it was very active in the successful 2013 US Senate Campaign of Cory Booker, having spent over a Half Million Dollars in Independent Expenditures on his behalf  last year.  Press articles during the Booker campaign last year reported that the Mobilization Project was funded by a handful of Wall Street hedge-fund managers and corporate executives.

Among those executives is Andrew Tisch of Loews Corporation, who according to one report donated $50,000 to the Mobilization Project in 2013-14. Mr. Tisch has long been considered a one of Cory Booker’s “major”  financial backers. Among his many corporate interests is a company called K12, where he serves as a former Chairman and current Board member.

K12’s work is described by the New York Times:  “The Company provides a continuum of technology-based educational products and solutions to districts, public schools, private schools, charter schools and families. Its products include Curriculum, Pre-K and K-8 Courses, Online School Platform-Learning Management System, High School Courses, Innovative Learning Applications, School Management Systems and PEAK12. Its managed public schools includes Full-time virtual schools and Blended schools, which includes Flex schools, Passport schools, Discovery schools and Other blended schools.

In other words, a for-profit company that, among its other services and products, owns and runs charter schools.

As for Senator Booker, the Washington Post reported in 2012, “[H]he has been an outspoken supporter of the school reform policies of the Republican governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, which include an expansion of charter schools, the end of teacher tenures, and the use of student standardized test scores to evaluate teachers.”

So, barely two weeks after Mr. Jackson’s campaign raked Jim Golden over the coals for being “caught red-handed accepting a campaign contribution from a billionaire hedge fund manager who does not mean our public school system any good,” we find out that Eric Jackson’s own campaign has accepted significant campaign support on his behalf from a Political Action Committee whose financial support comes from billionaire hedge-fund managers and corporate executives. Of those executives, at least one is closely associated with the exact same sort of support for charter schools that the Jackson campaign condemned when Jim Golden was connected to one.

Further, this PAC has up until now been exclusively associated with Cory Booker, also known as a big charter school fan. Mr. Jackson, and apparently some members of City Council, are becoming very closely tied to Senator Booker, as evidenced in this photo:

Senator Booker has been the subject of a lot of criticism over the years for his ties to Wall Street and Silicon Valley, ties that he seems now to be extending to Mr. Jackson and his allies in Trenton.

Will Trentonians find these kinds of ties acceptable for Eric Jackson, when he just ripped Jim Golden for them?

Just a few weeks back, Jackson spokesperson Michael Walker was quoted in the Trentonian as saying,

“We need leaders who want to protect our public schools, not engage in cloaked efforts to destroy them. When Mr. Golden talked recently about blowing up the box, was he referring to our public school system? This revelation is troubling, to say the least.”

Today, the exact same critique can be leveled against Eric Jackson. For him this is also a “troubling revelation.”

Will he, and Mr. Walker, respond to these questions?