Newark Mayor Cory Booker has tapped one of New Jersey’s top Democrats to join his campaign. Brendan Gill, the Essex County freeholder who served as state director for the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg, is Booker’s senior political advisor. He told NJ Today Senior Correspondent Desirée Taylor that he’s excited by Booker’s campaign and is very comfortable with his decision to join the campaign, despite the Lautenberg family’s public support of Frank Pallone in the Senate race.
Gill said he respects the Lautenberg family’s decision to endorse Pallone, but said his choice to join Booker wasn’t difficult. Gill said Lautenberg was a boss and mentor, but also a friend. “I loved him dearly and I always will. I’m very comfortable and excited about the opportunity that Mayor Booker has given me to serve on his Senate race. I think Mayor Booker represents an exciting opportunity for the type of leadership that we need in Washington,” Gill said.
Gill called Booker a consensus builder and said he has worked with people from all different realms in the best interest of his constituents, which he said is in the tradition of Lautenberg. “I was excited to be asked to be a part of his team,” Gill said.
Many people who worked for Lautenberg’s campaign in 2008, including Gill, are now associated with Booker’s Senate campaign.
While a report stated some staffers have had complaints about working for Booker’s campaign, Gill said most of the issues are related to field staffers. “Being a field staffer is the toughest thing to do on a campaign,” Gill said. “It is long hours, you are working in some tense conditions, oftentimes coming from potentially maybe out of state to work on a campaign. And I think what you saw were basically the effects of the fact that all the candidates in this race have been asked to do something which is very hard. They’ve been asked to build infrastructure, which a campaign usually builds over a six-, seven-, eight-, nine-month period, and build it in 30 days.”
The Lautenberg family has said Booker is using gimmicks and celebrity status to try to win the Senate seat, but Gill disagrees. “I think the mayor has done an effective job as an executive of our largest city and I think one of the things that I’m excited about, I know personally is to have somebody who has worked extensively on urban issues and bring that conversation to United States Senate. It’s a conversation as you saw, that doesn’t happen very often,” he said.
Gill said he respects Lautenberg’s family and the other three candidates running in the primary.
“I think primaries are a healthy thing for the party. We saw that in 2008 with the presidential election. We had a very hotly contested primary between then Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton. I think it was a net positive overall for the Democratic Party,” Gill said. “And I think that you’re gonna see that this primary overall is a net positive for our efforts, not only for Sen. Booker for the entire party going forward in the state of New Jersey.”