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Sacco won't end relationship with Lonegan aide who was fired over interview
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A profanity-laced interview given by a top aide to U.S. Senate candidate Steve Lonegan may have cost the aide his job for that campaign, but he’ll still be working for state Sen. Nicholas Sacco.Rick Shaftan, who lost his Lonegan campaign gig after he ridiculed Lonegan opponent Newark Mayor Cory Booker in a lengthy interview last week with political site Talking Points Memo, has made big bucks working for Sacco’s campaigns since the 1990s. And Sacco spokesman Paul Swibinski said that won’t stop.
"Rick is a friend," Swibinski told The Jersey Journal. "He has been a good guy and a good pollster and part of our team for a long time.
In the interview, published last Friday, Shaftan excoriates Booker for his widely publicized Twitter exchanges with a Portland, Ore. stripper. Booker's non-sexual back-and-forth with the woman indicates the mayor might be gay, Shaftan said.
"It was just weird. I mean, to me, you know, hey, if he said, 'Hey, you got really hot breasts, man. ... But, like, he didn't say that," Shaftan said in the interview. "It was like kind of like, I don't know, it was like what a gay guy would say to a stripper."
Lonegan, a Republican challenging Booker for the seat formerly occupied by the late Frank Lautenberg, subsequently fired Shaftan, saying his comments weren't reflective of the former Bogota mayor's campaign.
Swibinski said he spoke to Sacco the day after the interview was posted and discovered Sacco disapproved, too.
“He wishes that Rick had never made those comments," Swibinski told The Jersey Journal. “They don’t sound like him … I’ve never known Rick to judge anybody based on their sexuality."
Shaftan, who declined to comment, has earned a ton of cash working for Sacco’s campaigns. In 2011, when Sacco ran for re-election to the state Senate and as North Bergen’s mayor, Shafton’s Mountaintop Media billed $455,623.04 for polling, purchasing airtime for campaign ads and more, according to campaign finance reports for the two campaigns.
Sacco, a Democrat, won both races in landslides.
Mountaintop Media billed $6,434.75 alone for “Facebook, thank you’s” during Sacco’s 2011 mayoral campaign, reports show.
After speaking to The Jersey Journal about Shaftan, Swibinski called back to stress that Sacco “strongly supports Cory Booker” over Lonegan in Wednesday’s special election.