FOR HIRE? – Several men and women from Manhattan swarmed the campaign office of a Hoboken mayoral candidate today in response to a bogus flyer offering $200 for less than five hours of work. Both the Cammarano campaign and the Zimmer campaign denied any connection to the flyer. It was similar to a dirty trick posted against former candidate Beth Mason last month.
UPDATE: HobokenNow has reported that police had to come to Cammarano headquarters this afternoon because of the high number of unemployed New Yorkers who converged on them due to the hoax described below. Cammarano and Zimmer's campaigns both gave some of the visitors PATH fare to get back to Manhattan.
A flyer touting $200 pay for election work in Hoboken between 3:30 and 8 p.m. caused prospective hired hands from Manhattan to flood the mile-square city of Hoboken Tuesday. A runoff election is being held for mayor today between councilpeople Peter Cammarano and Dawn Zimmer.
The flyer, which did not contain any “paid for” language as required by law, was found hanging on the Lower East Side of Manhattan by several men and women who came to Hoboken today looking for work.
The first wave of men and women showed up early, and political observers expected more to arrive around 3:30.
The flyers claimed to be posted by the campaign of mayoral candidate Peter Cammarano, but the Cammarano camp took offense to the flyers and said they had nothing to do with them, especially since their campaign is very low on funds, according to one campaign official.
Today's hoax was similar to fake flyers posted last month saying that former candidate Beth Mason would pay $75 for absentee ballots. Mason ended up losing the race, with Cammarano and his opponent, Zimmer, making it into today's runoff.
At first, when workers showed up at Cammarano headquarters, they were apparently sent up Washington Street, claiming the Zimmer campaign “would take care of them,” according to Reginald Epps and William Stockton, two people who came to town from Manhattan to work.
At Zimmer headquarters, the men and women were told that the campaign had nothing to do with the flyers and sent back to Cammarano headquarters.
A Cammarano worker said about 15 people came to their headquarters asking about the flyer.
One man called this an last-ditch attempt to sway the election.
“This is just bad politics,” he said.
Unfortunately for the people from Manhattan, no one was giving them a sufficient explanation.
“We’re just looking for work,” Epps lamented.
I'm just glad to see he finally found some religion!!!!
Interesting story. I saw tons of people with Cammarano T shirts on most every street corner in the back half of town and many did not seem to be volunteers. The one I spoke to knew little or nothing about Hoboken or the candidates. Was this just a joke? It seemed to me he was hired to pass out flyers. I assume all of them were. Very McGreevey like!