Lautenberg, Holt settle with former staffer

Recently released campaign finance reports revealed that the campaigns of New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg and Representative Rush Holt paid $19,500 each to settle charges by a former election worker who claimed he was fired for hiring minorities.

Holt represents New Jersey’s 12th district, where much of the University is located. A nuclear physicist, he is also the former assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

The lawsuit was filed by Christopher Nastuk, a worker in Lautenberg’s 2008 Senate campaign, who said that he was fired from his position because he hired African-Americans.

Both Lautenberg and Holt denied the allegations, according to Angelo J. Genova, counsel to both campaigns, and issued the payments to avoid a costly legal process.

“The settlement of this lawsuit ends a baseless, frivolous, two–year-long litigation process,” Genova said. “The campaigns continue to vehemently deny these claims, and chose to accept this nuisance-value settlement to avoid any prospect of future litigation costs.”

The case first showed up in courts in 2010, when Holt and Republican Scott Sipprelle were engaged in a close battle for a House seat.

At the time, Genova stated that cases like these often came up during election times, suggesting that the lawsuit might be politically motivated.

However, Nastuk, a volunteer for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, said that he was a lifelong Democrat and struggled before deciding that the truth was ultimately more important than his political views.

In the lawsuit, Nastuk claimed that he had been hired by Senator Lautenberg’s campaign in 2008 and did canvassing work for both the Lautenberg and Holt campaigns.

Nastuk complained that the campaign considered black canvassers “demographically unfavorable in the predominately white areas of the district being targeted,” and that a few days after he hired Chauntay Jenkins and several other African-American canvassers, they were fired.

According to his complaint, the black canvassers were then replaced by white canvassers, and he himself was fired.

Nastuk claimed that a text document by the Lautenberg campaign entitled “nobrolists” referred disparagingly to “no brothers;” the Lautenberg campaign said it referred to North Brunswick workers.

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While Nastuk included Holt in his complaints, the operating expenditure records from the Federal Election Commission for 2008-09 show that Nastuk was on only Lautenberg’s payroll during the time.

The case was settled out of court over the summer and did not resurface until recent campaign finance reports revealed the payments of nearly $40,000 by the campaigns of Holt and Lautenberg.

Although the accusations of racial discrimination are serious, the effects of the recent disclosure of campaign payments to quietly close the case are unclear.

“To me, the accusations seem unsubstantiated and outlandish,” Jarrah O’Neill ’13, president of the College Democrats, said. “I think and hope it doesn’t have much impact on their campaigns.”