The Justice Department opened a criminal probe Friday of reports that New Jersey Republican operatives used money to try to hold down the black voter turnout in the state's Nov. 2 gubernatorial election.
At the same time, the Democratic Party filed suit in a U.S. District Court in Newark, N.J., seeking to overturn the election in which Republican Christine Todd Whitman narrowly defeated incumbent Democrat Jim Florio."The people of New Jersey need to know what happened," said Democratic National Committee Chairman David Wilhelm. He added that if the reports are true, "the election should not stand."
Penda Hair, a voting rights attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, also said her organization would consider a suit if the allegations prove correct. "The only effective remedy," she said, "would be to have new elections that are fair and square. That's what's appropriate under the Voting Rights Act (of 1965)."
The New Jersey case snowballed in the wake of comments Tuesday by Edward J. Rollins, a veteran GOP consultant who managed Whitman's campaign. Rollins boasted to reporters that he oversaw the expenditure of $500,000 in what is termed "walking-around money" to discourage black voters from going to the polls.
"We went into the black churches and basically said to the ministers who had endorsed Florio, `Do you have any special projects?"' Rollins said the cash went to charities designated by the ministers, who, in return, refrained from exhorting parishioners to vote for Florio.