Working ‘Sham’-ilies Party had me fake names: ex-staffer
Posted by Brooklyn Young Republican Club
Source: Sally Goldenberg / New York Post
A former employee of the Working Families Party says he was so disturbed by the labor-backed group’s practices that he walked out after only one week on the job.
In an exclusive interview, Brooklyn resident Patrick Crooks said he was encouraged by higher-ups to falsify names and addresses on sign-up sheets supporting the left-wing party’s push to repeal a state law that took rent regulation out of the city’s hands and gave it to the state.
“I saw that everyone else was doing it [putting down fake names] and my field manager was encouraging it . . . just so it looked like other people had been signing . . . But from my second day onward I decided not to do it . . . It just didn’t seem right to me,” Crooks, 26, from Maryland, told The Post.
Crooks’ charges come amid a probe of the WFP by the feds and the city Campaign Finance Board. He revealed a litany of shady practices that prompted him to quit, including:
* Being misled about the type of work he was hired to perform — fund-raising and canvassing instead of policy work;
* Getting a paycheck from the party’s former political arm, Data and Field Services, although the job posting he responded to was for the WFP, and
* Receiving instruction to collect money and signatures in buildings that had “no trespassing” signs and only leave if forced out by police.
SPECIAL NOTE FROM BYRC PRESIDENT JONATHAN JUDGE: The New York State petitioning process needs serious and immediate reform if we ever are to hope for a better crop of public servants. Not only does the Brooklyn Working Families Party allegedly forge signatures for other kinds of petitions, but they probably also do it for designating petitions. So have many Brooklyn Democratic leaders and Brooklyn Republican leaders. That’s because in court, it is far more difficult to prove signature fraud to eliminate an illegitimate candidate from the ballot than it is by nitpicking variations of street names, the use of maiden names, and of course using every technicality of election law to your opponent’s disadvantage. Take note of this fact: the petitioning process is a corrupt politician’s dream come true. Let’s implement reform and make ballot access their worst nightmare.
