TRENTON – In a soul food restaurant called The Big Easy down on South Warren Street, Verlina Reynolds-Jackson (VRJ), assemblywoman, social worker, former Trenton councilwoman, makes the case for how serving people – eyeball to eyeball in the street – puts her in a unique position to lead people.
The virtual world that sustains a simpering President who posts pictures of himself as Jesus Christ, looks far from Reynolds-Jackson’s reality, where she spent a lifetime in government trying to help those in need.
Her legislative prowess put her on the frontline in this town, of some of those key fights to check the grotesque spillover of power gurgling out of Donald Trump’s White House.
The Assemblywoman served as primary sponsor of the bill requiring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to ditch the masks. Governor Mikie Sherrill signed it into law. She also has long championed a voting rights bill, backburned in the aftermath of COVID, which now looks like heads-up baseball in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Now the Democrat wants to go Congress to represent the 12th District.
As someone who has worked thoughtfully and determinedly in government across a broad spectrum of issues, she doesn’t immediately reach for a bullhorn to demagogue a problem. Not is she inclined to reduce the world to a holy shit headline.
Trying to penetrate 24-7 cable on a message of constituent service in a throw-the-bums-out atmosphere, wherein people in her own party frequently scrap the rules to pump the same emotions Trump frantically manipulates to mask government incompetence – and, in his case, to cover up the Epstein Files – proves challenging – to say the least. People don’t necessarily want to hear about how someone works in government, so much as they seek the exorcising of their own inner demon anarchists.
Plus, there are 11 other people running in the Democratic Primary in what amounts to political bedlam.
Without the party lines in this new kind of Democratic Primary, and without the funds to checkmate someone like Dr. Adam Hamawy, who this week announced his forklifting of one million dollars into his campaign, to go along with the endorsement of his candidacy from U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, the Assemblywoman trusts in her longtime relationships.
“I’m the people’s champion,” she told InsiderNJ, as she continually argues for why her legislative experience matters. “I know, from over 30 years of government experience, when you work with people, that’s how you reform the system. I have that leadership, in areas relating to restoring community college funding, clean energy and water. I have connections and experience is what we need right now at a time when the President literally said he doesn’t care about the American economy.”
How does she beat a television takeover without raising considerable cash?
“It’s all about the people,” Reynolds-Jackson told InsiderNJ. “I don’t have big PAC money. I’m literally accepting donations of five dollars and up. I’m getting calls from people saying, ‘I want to knock on doors for you.’
“It’s about connecting affordability with protecting our rights,” added the daughter of a Vietnam veteran, herself a veteran of the state legislature, who grew up in Trenton.
For (the FULL!) Friday afternoon interview with Assemblywoman Reynolds-Jackson in the Big Easy, where she dives into redistricting, affordability, Israel, Iran, and ICE, please see below:
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