(nj.com) — On the day Mayor Cory Booker made his first state of the city address, he had vowed to end political contributions given in exchange for city contracts. ”No one with a city contract can give money to politicians in the city of Newark going forward,” Booker told reporters February 7, 2007. But that same afternoon his deputy mayor, Ronald Salahuddin, was doing just that, according to FBI surveillance tapes. ”Your contract’s the only one that’s been executed,” Salahuddin told Nicholas Mazzocchi, then the state’s largest contractor in building demolition. Only two months prior, according to the tapes, Salahuddin solicited a $5,000 contribution from Mazzocchi to Booker’s nonprofit, Newark Now, telling him, “This makes you strong.”
