NJ Dem Home candidate Sue Altman flip-flops on police and public security in resurfaced social media posts

New Jersey Home Democratic candidate Sue Altman has disavowed a number of anti-law enforcement insurance policies — together with the “Defund the Police” motion — that she backed in previous social media posts.

The previous boss of the Backyard State’s progressive Working Households Celebration has modified her previous stances, telling NJ Highlight Information in an interview final week that she is “not in favor of defund the police.”

“I believe it was a extremely foolish hashtag from the center of the pandemic that caught hearth on-line,” she mentioned. “I consider in a complete imaginative and prescient for public security that features all stakeholders.”

However as her marketing campaign to unseat Republican Rep. Tom Kean in New Jersey’s seventh District was heating up final fall, a Democratic marketing campaign operative tweeted out a screenshot displaying she supported defunding the police — a submit that has since been deleted.

“NJ’s Sheriffs … are overwhelmingly white and male, snuggled in w[ith] our huge county authorities, and management HUGE budgets,” Altman posted on Twitter, now X.

“These of us engaged on #DefundThePolice in Jersey would possibly take into account wanting right here,” she added.

The screenshot didn’t embody a date, however the profile picture matches Altman’s Twitter profile picture between 2019 and 2021, in line with archived posts from her account.

One other submit from the operative, Checkmate Advisors President Steve Ayscue, known as Altman out for celebrating the discharge from jail of a convicted cop killer.

In July 2020, she mentioned it was “superior” that the Working Households Celebration was pushing to “battle to shift sources from policing to actual group investments as an alternative.”

Different posts from the identical interval earlier than Altman’s run for workplace criticized the alleged “additional perks” out there to “white male dominated professions like cops [a]n[d] firefighters.”

She additionally inspired others to attend a “police reform rally” in June 2021 organized by a left-wing activist who helps reparations funds for black People, a coverage for which she has additionally acknowledged her help.

One other pro-police defunding group, Reproductive Freedom for All, endorsed Altman’s 2024 run earlier this yr, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

Kean had an eight-percentage-point lead on each Altman and Democratic main candidate Jason Blazakis in January, in line with an inside marketing campaign ballot commissioned by the Blazakis marketing campaign, earlier than the state’s main elections in June.

He nonetheless maintains a fundraising benefit in opposition to Altman, with the previous recording a greater than $3 million marketing campaign conflict chest as of the second quarter 2024 filings and the latter itemizing $2.2 million cash-on-hand.

The seventh Congressional District is presently rated as a Republican toss-up by the nonpartisan Cook dinner Political Report, one in all two dozen shut races that may decide management of the Home in November.

The Altman marketing campaign didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.