South Jersey political boss George Norcross is threatening to sue New Jersey law enforcement leaders who fingered him and key associates in a criminal racketeering case that was thrown out of court earlier this year.

In an Oct. 7 “litigation hold” letter, Norcross attorney Joseph Podraza of the Lamb McErlane firm in Philadelphia writes that tort claim notices have been filed—the written notification required before filing a lawsuit against a public entity or employee—over the “unfounded allegations and charges” against the party leader and his associates.

A damage suit, if filed, would be the latest in a series of efforts by Norcross and his allies to attack and discredit Attorney General Matthew Platkin, his investigators, and other state officials who have alleged wrongdoing connected to the party leader or his Camden-based insurance brokerage.

This time, Norcross is seeking the records of journalists who published stories that raised questions about how the Democrat and his political allies benefited from a state tax break program they helped author.

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The letter sent by Podraza singles out two journalists — this writer and former WNYC reporter Nancy Solomon.

The pair, while working in 2019 for the New York-based investigative news outlet ProPublica, documented how Norcross and his allies, including his brother, lawyer-lobbyist Philip Norcross, amassed properties and development rights on Camden’s Delaware River waterfront.

The 111-page racketeering indictment against Norcross and his associates, including former Camden Mayor Dana Redd, claimed the cabal strong-armed rival businessmen and nonprofits out of their legitimate property rights on the waterfront to capitalize on the lucrative tax breaks carved out for the city.

Norcross and two partners used $245 million in state tax breaks to build an 18-story office tower for their businesses on the river. Norcross also used the tax break money to partner in a new waterfront hotel.

Norcross is now seeking all audio recordings, interview notes, text messages, social media messages and posts, videotapes, spteadsheets, databases, telephone logs, Internet usage files, and records of any electronic correspondence between the reporters and a range of individuals who were connected to Platkin’s investigation or took part in the Camden development.

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All told, the letter from Norcross’ attorney names some four dozen people, from Attorney General’s Office investigators and former members of Gov. Phil Murphy’s executive staff, such as ex-senior aide Dan Bryan, to outside political advisers such as Brad Lawrence and Steve DeMicco, founders of the New Brunswick communications firm Message & Media Inc.

Norcross is also demanding records of any communication with prominent figures from his own circle, including Susan Bass Levin, president and CEO of Cooper Health System in Camden, the hospital network chaired by the party leader. He also seeks records from several individuals who emerged as unnamed witnesses in the indictment, including Anthony Perno, the former head of a Camden nonprofit allegedly muscled aside by the Norcross network.

Perno and the others would figure prominently in any corruption trial if Platkin’s request to reinstate the racketeering charges is granted by a state appeals court. Oral arguments on the appeal are scheduled for Nov. 6.

Media lawyers say that any effort to force reporters to disclose notes or sources or information is likely to fail. New Jersey law affords journalists and other news media employees strong protections against such disclosure in the form of the state “shield law.”

The law “provides the news media far-reaching protections that are equaled by few states in the nation,” according to a history of the law compiled by the nonprofit Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

The shield created an absolute privilege against compelled disclosure in civil cases and a qualified privilege in criminal cases, according to the orrganization. Journalists in New Jersey who have been pressured to disclose information have prevailed and have been awarded attorney fees, lawyers point out.

“There’s no doubt about it, it’s the best shield law in the country,” said Bruce Rosen, a prominent First Amendment lawyer with the Pashman Stein firm in Hackensack. “I can’t see a situation where a reporter has to give up sources in any civil damage case.”

Platkin’s office declined to comment on a possible damage suit.

Norcross has enjoyed steady support in his campaign against the hard-charging Platkin from political allies who have benefited from the party leader’s influence in Trenton and beyond.

Former Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican and former U.S. attorney known for prosecuting political corruption, at one point called Platkin’s racketeering case “garbage.”

Earlier this week, speaking at a New Jersey Business and Industry Association forum, Christie upped his criticism.

“I don’t think there’s been a person more deceitful and more destructive to state government in my lifetime here than the current attorney general. He is a disgrace to law enforcement,” he said. “As someone who did it for seven years myself, I’m embarrassed.”

The following day, Platkin responded to the criticism, saying: “I wish the former governor well in the twilight of his career.”

Another Norcross ally, longtime New Jersey NAACP President Richard Smith, sent an amicus brief to the Superior Court arguing that Platkin’s case be dismissed. The move raised the hackles of Camden progressives, including members of the African American community, who have sought to end the party boss system developed by Norcross.

In August, Smith, who serves on the Cooper University Health Care Board of Trustees with Norcross, took things a step further, calling for the abolishment of the state Office of Public Integrity and Accountability. The office, overseen by Platkin, led the investigation of Norcross and his associates. Smith joined a letter signed by several lawmakers and other Norcross allies claiming the “scandal-plagued” office was wasting millions while using illegal tactics to harass innocent defendants.

Norcross’ public defense campaign has also been taken up by prominent Democrats such as Donald Scarinci, a Hudson County attorney who has represented politicians, including the disgraced Robert Menendez. The former U.S. senator from Union City is serving an 11-year prison sentence after he was caught accepting gold bars and other bribes from foreign agents.

Earlier this year, Scarinci also attacked State Comptroller Kevin Walsh for pursuing an investigation that documented how insurance brokerages owned by George Norcross under the banner of Conner Strong & Buckelew benefited from public insurance funds the party boss has managed for more than 15 years—a claim Norcross denies.

“Much like the Norcross criminal indictment, the [Comptroller] report appears politically motivated and legally unsupported,” Scarinci wrote in a Sept. 27 column published in The New Jersey Globe.

Scarinci described Platkin’s case against Norcross as “lawfare” and defended the hardball politics and dealmaking the party leader is known for. “There is a very important difference between violating the law and taking advantage of business opportunities,” he wrote.

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Jeff Pillets is a freelance journalist whose stories have been featured by ProPublica, New Jersey Spotlight News, WNYC-New York Public Radio and The Record. He was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2008 for stories on waste and abuse in New Jersey state government. Contact jeffpillets AT icloud.com.

Windows on the world: Allan Gorman in the city

Pity poor paper. It really wants to be glass. Ditto for canvas. It isn’t glass, either, and it rankles at its own opacity. Sometimes it feels like the entire reason painters add brilliant pigment to panels is to help stiff surfaces achieve the peaceable qualities of a windowpane. Glass doesn’t fight the light. It acquiesces to its demands for penetration. Glass lets the illumination in, and when it does, it amplifies its brilliant shine.

But painters are illusionists, not alchemists. Any windows that they open are in our minds. In “Color, Inside and Outside the Lines,” Prof. Beatrice Mady of the Fine Arts Gallery at St. Peter’s University (47 Glenwood Ave.) pairs Bryant Small and Allan Gorman, summoners of imaginary photons. Neither one has managed to transmute paper and canvas into glass — no Lite Brite bulb shines behind their frames — but they’ve bestowed an unusual translucency to their urban studies anyway.

To those who’ve followed his work, Gorman is more associated with things concrete than things transparent. But even appreciators of his post-industrial cityscapes and images of steely underbridge anomalies have noticed that he’s just as interested in the way in which light passes through girders as he is with the girders themselves. His prior shows have been busy with shadows and sun. For “Color, Inside and Outside the Lines,” he’s removed the realistic representations of tenements, bricks, and stairwells but left the play of illumination in place. He’s also changed his favored hues, switching from institutional greens and rust orange-brown to the colors of the urban undertone: pale yellow, daybreak pink, the light blue of the apartment skylight. Looking at his recent paintings feel a little like catching a glimpse of the code behind a 3-D computer simulation. If you’re familiar with what he does, the St. Peter’s show is a trip.

It’s even a trip if you’ve never heard of him. His recent canvases are full of childlike joy about what light can do: the way it radiates and bends over barriers, refracts, mixes colors, and alternately sorts, blends, and elevates objects in its path. It’s hard not to get swept up in his enthusiasm. “Through the Looking Glass,” an oil painting on a square panel, might remind you of an empty storefront window of a shop, or a revolving door, or a ticket-taker’s booth. Gorman’s angles his images of tinted, transparent sheets to draw the eye the past surface lines and into an undefined interior space. This is one of the special property of glass: it promises honesty. It lets us in. We may not know what we’re looking at, but we believe that there’s a space for observation and we’re seeing what there is to see.

Mystery in plain daylight: “Through the Looking Glass”

That same openness — and invitation to stare — is present in a Gorman triptych in which shapes that suggest a building corner on a wraparound sidewalk are visible through floating panes that are given dimension and presence through the inclusion of a black shadow. As we apprehend the colored blocks through the hovering frame, they make immediate sense to us. It’s uncanny, and maybe even a little disturbing, how familiar the scene feels, and how quickly it coheres into a streetscape.

Only someone attuned to the deep code of architecture and the relationship between light and the city could have painted “Metropolis,” with its radiance expressed as long see-through wedges brightening the rows and columns of the built environment. This is the urban core he’s showing us: diagonal lines suggestive of light intersecting with vertical ones suggestive of glass and concrete. It’s not so different from the shadow-play he’s given us in his paintings of specific bridges. It is merely, as he’s put it elsewhere, a different way of seeing.

Find myself a city to live in: Gorman’s “Metropolis.”

As Gorman gets elusive, Bryant Small has become more specific. He’s hung the names of global cities on his dramatic alcohol ink paintings, each with fields of vibrant color, smears, drips, and pressurized streaks that make it look like a squeegee was applied to the paper. “Berlin,” for instance, looks like a nest of long blue-gray thorns atop a nimbus of aqua, pink, and orange. Are we staring down a busy street that’s all angles, sudden illuminations, and brisk activity, or does Small mean to suggest something about the emotional weather in eastern Germany? Probably both. The mesmerizing “London” is  all dazzling color in the background and grey horizontal lines in the foreground that resemble plane-window moisture pulled sideways through the force of acceleration. Visitors to England will surely sympathize. There’s lots to see, but it’s raining out.

Take my breath away: Bryant Small’s “Berlin”

Small is a chromatic maximalist, saturating every inch of his pieces with bright pigment and adding black lines and splatters to make his hot pinks and Caribbean greens all the more intense. Because of its evenness and its tendency to ripple and pool and dry that way, alcohol ink on paper bears an eerie resemblance to stained glass. Sensing an opportunity to take us to church, Small drenches his pieces so thoroughly it’s like he’s dipped them in a rainbow. In “Tokyo,” the most remarkable of his globetrotting series, an icy blue-green surface seems to mask neon lights, headlamps, and a downtown-district glow. It’s like we’re apprehending a streetscape, darkly, through a shattered pane. Cracks are everywhere, but the sheet of glass seems thick and unlikely to budge.

Dream in Shibuya: Small visits (or thinks about) Tokyo

Yet glass — or the impression of glass — will have its way. Even though much in “Tokyo” is obscured, the translucency that Small is able to generate puts us right in the scene. We feel like there are sources of light just beyond our apprehension. Like Gorman, he puts our faith in glass to narrative ends. There’s a city waiting for us on the other side of the window. We can trace its outlines and sense the contours of its architecture and the emotional experience of living there. Slip past the invisible barrier, if only with our eyes, and we can be part of it.

(Although it’s open during St. Peter’s regular hours, the MacMahon Student Center can be tricky to get into. Tell the security guard you’d like to go to the fifth floor to see the art exhibition. Or just wait for a friendly student to let you in.)

Tris McCall regularly writes about visual art (and other topics) for NJArts.net, Jersey City Times, and other independent publications. He’s also written for the Newark Star-Ledger, Jersey Beat, the Jersey City Reporter, the Jersey Journal, the Jersey City Independent, Inside Jersey, and New Jersey dot com. He also writes about things that have no relevance to New Jersey. Not today, though.

Eye Level is an online journal dedicated to visual art in Jersey City, New Jersey. A new review will appear every Tuesday morning at 8 a.m., and there’ll be intermittent commentaries posted to the site in between those reviews.

A tight race faces Democratic Representative Mikie Sherrill and Republican Jack Ciattarelli in their bids to become New Jersey governor next week, according to polls.

Sherrill holds a lead among young voters, a traditional Democratic group that shifted rightward in last year’s presidential race, recent surveys suggest.

Newsweek reached out to the Ciattarelli and Sherrill campaigns for comment via email.

Why It Matters

The New Jersey gubernatorial race is a key bellwether for the mood of the electorate ahead of the 2026 midterms, when Democrats will be hoping to flip seats across the country in a 2018-style “blue wave.”

The election will be a test for Democrats’ efforts to win back support where President Donald Trump gained ground in last year’s presidential race. Gen Z is one group that swung toward Trump last year. They backed former Vice President Kamala Harris by about 11 points last year, a much tighter margin than former President Joe Biden’s 24-point margin among Gen Z four years earlier.

Sherrill will be seeking to win back those voters in New Jersey, a state that also drifted toward competitiveness. It backed Harris by only about six points, down from Biden’s 16-point victory in the Garden State in 2020.

What to Know

Polling suggests that Sherrill holds a slight—but not insurmountable—lead over Ciattarelli in the final days of the campaign. The data points to a closer race than in 2021, when Ciattarelli nearly defeated incumbent Democratic Governor Phil Murphy, overperforming his polling numbers.

Sherrill is also winning over Gen Z voters, according to polls.

A Fox News poll showed 60 percent of voters under 30 are backing Sherrill, while only 33 percent are voting for Ciattarelli. Two percent said they’d vote for someone else, and five percent of the 1,002 voters surveyed from October 10 to October 14 said they were unsure.

A co/efficient poll similarly found the 53-year-old former federal prosecutor with a lead among Gen Z voters. Sherrill led voters between the ages of 18 and 34 by 26 points (57 percent to 31 percent). It polled 995 likely voters from October 23 to October 27, 2025 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.27 percentage points.

An Emerson College poll also showed Sherrill leading voters between the ages of 18 and 29 by 38 points (56 points to 18 points), though that poll notably found a higher percentage were still undecided (15 percent) or voting for someone else (11 percent). It surveyed 935 likely voters from September 22 to September 23 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points for all voters.

A Rutgers University poll showed a more competitive race to win over Gen Z voters. In that survey, Sherrill led by only six points (49 percent to 43 percent). It surveyed 795 likely voters from October 3 to October 17 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.7 percentage points.

Joseph Patten, Professor of Political Science at Monmouth University, told Newsweek that Gen Z is a critical voting bloc for Democrats.

“When young people are energized and mobilized, it typically fares well for Democratic candidates. When they’re not, when they’re down in the dumps, that’s typically a bad sign for Democratic candidates,” he said. “So we’ll see where they are in 2025.”

He pointed to the 2020 election, when Biden defeated Trump, as an example of Gen Z proving to be one of the most important groups who decided the outcome of the election. Their rightward shift was largely due to a drop off in voting numbers from 2020 to 2024, he said.

In 2020, Gen Z turnout in New Jersey was about 67 percent. In 2024, that number was 54 percent—still higher than the national average of 47 percent, Patten said. The youth vote in New Jersey also skews more diverse, as about 56 percent of students in New Jersey schools are non-white, he said.

There’s also a notable gender gap between young men and young women, he said.

“Young women are much more likely to be liberal, and young men are more inclined to be more conservative,” he said. “There’s also a gender gap in turnout. Young women vote by nine percentage points higher than young men.”

Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, told Newsweek that the election is a “departure from last year,” when Gen Z voters shifted to Trump.

“Those voters are still out there. They’re still partisan. There’s no question about that. But as a bloc, as a distinct voting group or as a generation, I think there is a reappraisal,” he said. “Have they gotten what they bargained for? Is the federal government that we’ve gotten so far what our youngest voters voted for?”

On the Republican side, the assassination of conservative pundit Charlie Kirk has been a “rallying point” for young voters, he said. There is a sense of “let’s do thus for Charlie” that could benefit the Ciattarelli campaign with more partisan voters. That will not necessarily appeal to those young voters who are less engaged and partisan, he said.

Democrats don’t have that same “inflection,” but the Sherrill campaign has also been working to engage younger supporters by having them write postcards or make phone calls, he said.

There is unlikely to be “the same level of engagement” in the race as a presidential contest, he said. There are certainly younger voters who are engaged—but it is unlikely to be as widespread, he added.

How Does Gen Z Polling Compare to 2021?

There were no exit polls conducted in New Jersey for the last governor’s race in 2021. In that race, Murphy won by just over three percentage points (51 percent to 48 percent), but it’s unclear exactly what percentage of Gen Z voters he ended up winning.

But an Emerson College poll from October 2021 showed that Murphy was on track to win Gen Z by nearly 16 points (58 percent to 42 percent). Meanwhile, a Monmouth University poll, which ended up overestimating Murphy’s support by a larger margin, found that he was on track to win Gen Z voters by 25 points (56 percent to 31 percent).

Whether or not polling overestimates Sherrill’s support as it did for Murphy in the last gubernatorial race is a key question facing pollsters ahead of Election Day. Many Republicans believe the support for 63-year-old businessman Ciattarelli, who missed out in the previous gubernatorial race, has been undercounted in polls.

Historically, younger voters do turn out at lower rates than older voters, and it’s yet to be seen which candidate does a better job at mobilizing their youngest supporters before next week’s election.

What People Are Saying

Sherrill wrote Monday on X: “Donald Trump’s global extortion racket is lining his pockets and costing New Jerseyans more at the register. Not on my watch—as governor, I’m going to work with our Attorney General to defend New Jerseyans against Washington’s reckless tariffs.”

Ciattarelli wrote Monday on X: “This campaign is about change. It’s about restoring hope for New Jersey’s future. Hope for families struggling to afford to stay here, seniors struggling to retire here. Hope for safer communities, better schools, and a government that finally puts you first.”

What Happens Next

Early voting has been underway, and Election Day is set for November 4. Forecasters give Sherrill an advantage—both the Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball rate the race as Leans Democratic.