A Superior Court Judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by Rev. Derrick Green, a sometimes controversial political consultant who tried to shake down Democratic gubernatorial candidate Steve Fulop.
Green said he was owed $92,139, but he never signed a contract with the Fulop campaign, which believed he was working as a volunteer.
Indeed, Green could provide only a proposal for services and an invoice where the amounts didn’t match up. That led the judge, Jane Weiner, to dismiss the case entirely.
An invoice dated May 16 bills the Fulop campaign $15,000-per-month for six months for “consulting, strategy, outreach, travel, staffing, meeting prep, and follow-up” and an additional $2,129 for what was described as a “Cherry Hill Meeting.”
“Rev. Green joined the campaign as a volunteer with the understanding his role would be revisited once we ramped up on voter targeting in 2025,” Fulop’s spokesperson, Ashley Manz, said in July when the lawsuit was filed.
Manz said the Fulop campaign told Green they wouldn’t get squeezed, which led him to pursue a settlement amount and then file a lawsuit.
Fulop’s campaign counsel, Scott Salmon, represented the Jersey City mayor.
It’s been a tough year politically for Green: his candidate for U.S. Senate in Maryland, David Trone, spent over $60 million of his own money but lost the Democratic primary, and his candidate in New Jersey, Tammy Murphy, dropped out of the race in March.
Fulop and Green had a falling out over the New Jersey Senate race, arguing over the Jersey City mayor’s decision to rescind his endorsement of Murphy and back Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) instead. Green and Fulop stopped communicating earlier this year while he was spending his time working against Angela Alsobrooks, who will become Maryland’s first Black senator in January.
“Rev. Green became upset when Mayor Fulop endorsed Andy Kim, and he was increasingly disgruntled when David Trone lost badly in his primary,” said Manz. “During this time there was little to no contact between Green and our campaign due to his commitments elsewhere. The day after Trone lost, Green sent multiple texts saying that he quit our campaign due to the Mayor endorsing Andy Kim and that he was demanding to be compensated for work, that was never approved, even though he never had a contract with the campaign.”
Green worked on Gov. Phil Murphy’s 2017 and 2021 campaigns to help turn out Black voters and worked in the governor’s office directing outreach with faith leaders.
Green comes with some baggage: while working for Murphy in 2017, he stood by and said nothing when then-Passaic NAACP President Jeffrey Dye hurled a diatribe of anti-Semitic attacks against Assemblyman Gary Schaer (D-Passaic). Green initially denied being present.
In 2019, Murphy fired Dye from his job at the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development after learning of anti-Semitic and anti-Latino statements Dye made on Facebook.