As Newark mayor, Cory Booker oversaw a water management system that suffered a major scandal, experts say. Now, the city's widening water crisis could raise uncomfortable questions for Booker's 2020 campaign.
As a presidential candidate, Cory Booker has made environmental protections a central tenet of his social justice platform. As a United States senator, he emerged as a leading voice on the front lines of safe water for urban-dwellers.
The latest figures from federal observers show that children in Newark's Essex County are in fact nearly four times more likely to have elevated blood lead levels than those in Flint, where cost-cutting measures resulted in lead and other toxins seeping into the drinking water supply. As a result, city officials handed out filters more than eight months ago.
The state comptroller's report referred several cases to law enforcement. Federal prosecutors brought charges against eight people involved in the watershed scheme. Six of them pleaded guilty and five of them received lengthy prison sentences. In a separate civil suit filed by trustees of the watershed in 2015, plaintiffs named Booker as one of more than two dozen parties responsible for the scandal. But U.S. Judge Vincent Papalia dismissed Booker from the suit in June of 2016, citing a statute that protected him from prosecution because he served on the board only in his capacity as a public servant.
"There is just no connection between the people who defrauded Newark residents at the Newark Watershed a decade ago and the very real water crisis impacting Newark residents today -- other than they both share one word in common - 'water,'" according to Sabrina Singh, a campaign spokeswoman.
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