New Jersey House Democratic candidate Sue Altman has disavowed several anti-law enforcement policies — including the “Defund the Police” movement — that she backed in past social media posts.
The former boss of the Garden State’s progressive Working Families Party has modified her past stances, telling NJ Spotlight News in an interview last week that she is “not in favor of defund the police.”
“I think it was a really silly hashtag from the middle of the pandemic that caught fire online,” she said. “I believe in a comprehensive vision for public safety that includes all stakeholders.”
But as her campaign to unseat Republican Rep. Tom Kean in New Jersey’s 7th District was heating up last fall, a Democratic campaign operative tweeted out a screenshot showing she supported defunding the police — a post that has since been deleted.
“NJ’s Sheriffs … are overwhelmingly white and male, snuggled in w[ith] our massive county government, and control HUGE budgets,” Altman posted on Twitter, now X.
“Those of us working on #DefundThePolice in Jersey might consider looking here,” she added.
The screenshot did not include a date, but the profile image matches Altman’s Twitter profile photo between 2019 and 2021, according to archived posts from her account.
Another post from the operative, Checkmate Advisors President Steve Ayscue, called Altman out for celebrating the release from prison of a convicted cop killer.
In July 2020, she said it was “awesome” that the Working Families Party was pushing to “fight to shift resources from policing to real community investments instead.”
Other posts from the same period before Altman’s run for office criticized the alleged “extra perks” available to “white male dominated professions like cops [a]n[d] firefighters.”
She also encouraged others to attend a “police reform rally” in June 2021 organized by a left-wing activist who supports reparations payments for black Americans, a policy for which she has also stated her support.
Another pro-police defunding group, Reproductive Freedom for All, endorsed Altman’s 2024 run earlier this year, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Kean had an eight-percentage-point lead on both Altman and Democratic primary candidate Jason Blazakis in January, according to an internal campaign poll commissioned by the Blazakis campaign, before the state’s primary elections in June.
He still maintains a fundraising advantage against Altman, with the former recording a more than $3 million campaign war chest as of the second quarter 2024 filings and the latter listing $2.2 million cash-on-hand.
The 7th Congressional District is currently rated as a Republican toss-up by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, one of two dozen close races that will determine control of the House in November.
The Altman campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
