Rep. Mikie Sherrill abruptly pivoted from a question about the unemployment rate in New Jersey to launch a scathing attack on Republican Jack Ciattarelli’s business.
“My opponent likes to talk a lot about being a businessman, but I think what New Jersey doesn’t know much about his business, how he made his millions by working with some of the worst offenders and saying that opioids were safe, putting out propaganda, publishing their propaganda,” she said.
“Tens of thousands of New Jerseyans died. And as if that wasn’t enough, then he was paid to develop an app so that people who were addicted could more easily get access to opioids.”
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Sherrill was referring to a NJ.com report that came out at the end Ciattarelli’s last run for governor that spotlighted a $12.2 million contract one of his companies took from 2007 to 2016 to publish pharma industry talking points about opioids.
One of the claims in the documents published by Ciattarelli’s company was that people with chronic pain were not at higher risk of opiate addiction.
Ciattarelli snapped back, “first of all, shame on you.”
“During the Biden administration, she had no problem whatsoever with tens of thousands of people crashing our border each and every day, not knowing what impact they had in our communities with regard to the fentanyl crisis,” he fired back.
