Lowenstein Sandler PC

Only in New Jersey would an Attorney General facing an ethics investigation by an indepedent prosecutor and calls for resignation and even impeachment hire a lobbying firm to handle her personal public relations. The Record reported this weekend that Zulima Farber has hired the highly-respected Mickey Faigen of Issues Management to advise her on how to handle the media.

Issues Management is owned by Lowenstein Sandler, the Roseland law firm where Farber was a partner before her appointment as Attorney General. The firm's website says that Issues Management "has
repeatedly been ranked New Jersey's number one lawyer-lobbying firm." Among the clients for whom Issues Management lobbies state government is the St. Barnabas Health Care System, which recently agreed to pay a $265 million settlement on federal charges that it defrauded Medicare. As a result of that settlement, nine smaller New Jersey hospitals have filed a lawsuit against St. Barnabas.

From the Issues Management website: "Issues Management leverages the knowledge and experience of our senior staff in regulation, legislation and crisis communication to generate distinct, high impact strategies. We execute them with intensity. Wherever public and private concerns intersect, we know the landscape; we know the players; we think beyond the familiar."

New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission records show that Hamlet Goore, the live-in boyfriend of Attorney General Zulima Farber, conrtibuted $500 to the New Jersey Democratic State Committee on September 25, 2005. Goore listed his occupation as "Legal" and his employer as Lowenstein Sandler, the Roseland law firm where Farber was a partner.

A source at the prestigious firm says that "Hamlet never worked here," and questioned whether they would ever hire an attorney "with his record." Goore was disciplined by the state Supreme Court in 1992 for engaging in "patterns of neglect" and for failure to "promptly deliver funds to a client," and again in 1995 for filing inaccurate and false fee certifications with a bankruptcy court." Six months earlier, Goore had contributed $1,000 to Jon Corzine's gubernatorial campaign. He listed his employer as the Township of Irvington (where he is now the acting Commissioner of Community Development and Planning) and his address as the residence her shares with Farber in North Bergen.

For extreme junkies only: in 1977, Goore was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for State Assembly, running off the line in a primary against then two-term Assemblyman Richard Codey. He got crushed. Goore's first wife, Joyce Goore, is a Democratic Councilwoman in East Orange, and their son, Darius Goore, served as Corzine's Deputy Chief of Staff in his Washington Senate office.