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‘Master tactician’ George Norcross promotes image as a civic leader as prosecutors call him a crime boss

The power broker's appearance this week alongside Gov. Phil Murphy and four former governors at a Cooper Health event reflects an effort by Norcross to bolster his public image as a civic leader.

George E. Norcross III, chairman of Cooper University Health Care, is seated between N.J. Gov. Phil Murphy (left) and former Gov. Chris Christie (right) during groundbreaking ceremonies at Cooper University Hospital in Camden for a $3 billion expansion project.
George E. Norcross III, chairman of Cooper University Health Care, is seated between N.J. Gov. Phil Murphy (left) and former Gov. Chris Christie (right) during groundbreaking ceremonies at Cooper University Hospital in Camden for a $3 billion expansion project.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer

George E. Norcross III sat quietly, a spectator to his own courtroom drama, as a New Jersey prosecutor last week described him as an organized crime boss who allegedly used his control of Camden government to “strong-arm private citizens” into surrendering their property rights so he and his friends could profit.

Less than a week later, the Cooper University Health Care chairman and Democratic power broker was back in command, appearing alongside Gov. Phil Murphy and four former New Jersey governors Tuesday to celebrate the hospital network’s groundbreaking on a $3 billion expansion project. Talk show host and Camden County native Kelly Ripa joined them onstage, and former Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski, a Cooper board member, was on hand.

“There’s only one guy in this state that could pull this group together,” Murphy said before a room full of hundreds of elected officials, labor leaders, and others inside Cooper’s 10-story pavilion. Norcross received multiple standing ovations.

The remarkable split screen shows how Norcross, 68, executive chairman of insurance firm Conner Strong & Buckelew and former member of the Democratic National Committee, retains significant influence despite facing criminal racketeering charges that would make many defendants politically radioactive.

It also reflects an effort by Norcross to bolster his public image as a benevolent civic leader who uses his considerable political and financial capital to invest in and fight for a long-struggling city that has seen promising signs of renewal.

Seven months after New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin announced the 13-count indictment against Norcross and five codefendants, a judge is now weighing the defense’s request to toss the charges. If the case ultimately goes to trial, the defense will have to push back against prosecutors’ portrayal of a man who is allegedly heard on a tape recording calling one of his victims a “putz” who can’t be trusted “until you got a bat over his head.”

Beyond debating the facts and the law — the nuts and bolts of any criminal case — a fight is emerging between the government and defense over which version of Norcross seems more authentic: the ruthless operator who crushes his enemies for private gain, or the tireless advocate for a city and a region long neglected until he and his allies used their clout in Trenton and elsewhere to demand more resources.

Engaging the news media and shaping public opinion are time-honored traditions for prosecutors and defendants alike. But perhaps more so than most criminal defendants, the media-savvy Norcross — a former co-owner of The Inquirer who has been running and strategizing political campaigns for decades — knows how to play the game.

For years, he has been keenly aware of his public perception — and worked to shape it — including with respect to his investments on the Camden waterfront, now the focal point of prosecutors’ case against him. It was a development project, Norcross’ public relations consultant wrote in a private 2015 memo, that would “change the direction of Camden for a century.”

“This is somebody who has been a master tactician of how to win campaigns and how to influence people, how to shape opinion,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. “And so, when somebody is defending their freedom, running for their lives, they’re going to use all the tools in their toolbox.”

‘A force of nature’

So there was Norcross on Tuesday, seated onstage between Murphy, a Democrat, and former Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican. Former Govs. Jon Corzine and Jim McGreevey, both Democrats, and Republican Thomas H. Kean were also on hand — as were current Democratic gubernatorial candidates Steve Sweeney, the former Senate president and Norcross’ childhood friend, and U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer.

When Norcross stepped on the podium, the Eagles superfan ribbed the political leaders for their sports allegiances — Murphy likes the Patriots, and Christie famously roots for the Cowboys. Norcross credited Murphy, though, for being “kind enough to text me after every Eagles victory.”

One after another, the politicians heaped praise on Norcross and local officials for Camden’s progress on issues like public safety and education.

Christie described Norcross as one of his “indispensable partners” during his governorship.

“The Norcrosses have been a force of nature,” added Corzine.

Kean, a Republican, said: “If there’s one human being in the center of the revival of Camden, Camden County, and this whole area, it’s George Norcross.”

Later, the political leaders, Norcross, and Ripa posed for cameras as they shoveled dirt outside the hospital for the groundbreaking on the expansion project — first announced in late 2022 — which includes three new patient towers. The first phase, a 10-story, $650 million tower, includes $170 million in state grant money.

Afterward, Ripa — who for years has appeared in Cooper’s TV commercials and who is the daughter of former county clerk Joe Ripa — hosted a disco-themed party in a tent, delivering on a pledge she made during the pandemic to honor Cooper’s staff. Norcross helped her cut a red velvet cake.

Christie, a former U.S. attorney, told reporters he wanted to show up Tuesday in part to “make clear to people who care about justice being done the right way in this state that this thing is baseless.”

The former governor, who signed into law economic development legislation that is now part of the state’s case against Norcross, called the indictment “a piece of garbage.”

Howard Master, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan and an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, said the celebration “shows the weakness of the attorney general because no one is distancing themselves from” Norcross.

“The thing is, Norcross, of course, is not even denying he has some power and influence,” said Master, a partner at global investigations firm Nardello. “He’s just saying, ‘I’m in the private sector, and I’m powerful and influential because I’m trusted, and people rely on me, and I can get stuff done.’”

Not everyone shared that assessment. Antoinette Miles, New Jersey state director of the Working Families Party, said the event was part of Norcross’ strategy to “distort the facts and to rewrite history.”

“It is designed to pressure the judge overseeing this case,” she said.

‘Rattling their cages’

To date, Norcross and his attorneys have framed the indictment as an attack on Camden and its “renaissance,” invoking Barack Obama’s 2015 visit to the city, when the then-president called Camden’s new policing model “a symbol of promise for the nation.”

Norcross has won backing from prominent players in state politics. When he asked a judge to dismiss the indictment, groups including the state NAACP and AFL-CIO — whose leaders attended Cooper’s groundbreaking Tuesday — filed a brief supporting his position.

And when public radio station WHYY published a piece highlighting activists’ criticism of Norcross, the office of Camden Mayor Victor Carstarphen accused the outlet of bias in a Jan. 21 city news release: “Shame on you, WHYY.”

Norcross and his allies are not just playing defense. They have repeatedly criticized Attorney General Platkin and his office’s anti-corruption unit, which has faced scrutiny for its handling of certain cases including one involving a rabbi who was prosecuted for money laundering even as a detective testified there had been no crime. A judge ultimately tossed the charges.

Then there is Norcross himself. On the day the charges were announced, Norcross showed up at the attorney general’s news conference and sat in the front row — a highly unusual move, perhaps aimed at “getting under the skin of the prosecutors, rattling their cages,” said Rasmussen, a onetime press secretary to McGreevey.

‘The guy with the cigar and the horns’

Norcross hasn’t always been so front and center in public life. After chairing the Camden County Democratic Committee from 1989 to 1995, he receded into the background as he became an unofficial party kingmaker leading a machine that raised money for candidates, doled out jobs to allies, and awarded government contracts to donors.

But by the time secret tape recordings capturing Norcross’ conversations with a local elected official were made public in 2005 — replete with F-bombs and demands that his interlocutor fire an adversary — his image had been cemented in the public mind.

“My biggest mistake was allowing myself to be defined and branded in the ’90s,” Norcross told an interviewer in 2013. “I stayed in the background because I thought that’s what political bosses did. And I got portrayed, you know, as the guy with the cigar and the horns.”

He eventually embraced a more public profile, speaking out as Cooper’s unpaid chairman, joining a group of investors who bought The Inquirer in 2012 (before selling his stake two years later amid a court fight over control of the company), and making public appearances with Christie as they worked on various Camden initiatives.

The city laid off almost half its police force in 2011 amid state budget cuts. Crime spiked, and the city of fewer than 80,000 people recorded 67 homicides in 2012 — the most on record. Amid that crisis, Norcross worked with Christie and local officials to disband Camden’s police department and replace it with a county-run force, and supported a state takeover of the city’s schools.

Violent crime soon dropped — prompting praise from Obama and others — and has continued to trend downward. Last year, the city had its fewest homicides, 17, since 1985, officials said.

And since the state took over the school district, the graduation rate has increased from 49% to 64.7% in 2022-23, while the dropout rate has declined. Significant social problems remain, including a poverty rate (28.5%) that is triple the state average, according to census data.

Nevertheless, the progress in a city once known as the poorest and most violent in the country has bolstered Norcross’ narrative of “Camden Rising,” even as critics, including some political activists, have said this portrayal ignores what they see as the power broker’s corrupting influence.

When Norcross and developer Liberty Property Trust in 2015 prepared to announce plans for office buildings, apartments, and retail stores on the waterfront — development that would be enabled by hundreds of millions of dollars in state tax credits — Norcross’ team made sure to place it in the context of broader changes taking hold in Camden.

“The Camden Waterfront Project is a development that will change the way people think about Camden,” Dan Fee, a public relations consultant, wrote in a September 2015 memo to Norcross and Liberty’s CEO, William Hankowsky, outlining a media strategy for the announcement.

“It is not a series of isolated development projects, reformation of an antiquated and troubled police department or even a new way of thinking about schools,” said the memo, which was later made public by a state task force that looked into New Jersey’s economic development programs. “This is the first development that signals all of those efforts are together successfully building a new Camden.”

“YOU have been committed to revitalizing Camden and entities with which you are involved have been leading the way,” Fee wrote in the memo to Norcross, describing how he would pitch the story to an Inquirer reporter.

There’s nothing unusual about companies strategizing over outreach to the news media. But the episode showed a level of sophistication in public relations that now presents a challenge for prosecutors who want to pierce Norcross’ narrative.

Norcross has said he and his partners invested $350 million in the project, which included an office tower for their businesses and an apartment complex. “We decided that we were going to put our money where our mouth was and be part of turning an American city around and make it proud again,” he told reporters when he was indicted in June.

‘Real havoc’

The government has not been reluctant to tell its own story, starting with its decision to write a lengthy indictment that included allegations beyond the essential facts of the crimes alleged and the relevant statutes.

Using a so-called speaking indictment, prosecutors sketched out a broader narrative that included allegations that would seem to contradict Norcross’ stated interests in promoting the public good.

The indictment includes a quote from a September 2013 recorded conversation in which his brother Philip Norcross, a lawyer, allegedly said the tax-credit legislation he helped write would “cause real havoc,” as it gave companies that invested in Camden “100% tax credit for all capital and related costs.”

It alleges that Philip Norcross, representing his brother’s interests, “resisted efforts to include retail in the legislation and to focus on redevelopment that would create community access to the waterfront development.”

At the news conference announcing the charges, Attorney General Platkin stood at a lectern flanked by boards featuring images of the various properties prosecutors say Norcross extorted from a rival developer and a nonprofit.

The “Norcross Enterprise” has caused harm not only to businesses and nonprofits, Platkin said, but “especially — especially — to the City of Camden and its residents.”

‘A safety net hospital’

Perhaps Norcross’ greatest asset in rebutting prosecutors’ narrative that he wields power for personal gain is his association with Cooper, the nonprofit hospital network he helped turn around in the late 1990s as it suffered record deficits.

Since then, under Norcross, Cooper has opened a $220 million pavilion, a $139 million medical school affiliated with Rowan University, and the $100 million MD Anderson Cancer Center. That expansion has been financed in part by bonds issued by state and local authorities.

During the court hearing last week, Norcross attorney Michael Critchley said the Norcross family, beginning with George Norcross’ father, has been associated with Cooper for 75 years. “It provides the type of medical help to the people who cannot otherwise obtain it,” Critchley told the judge, adding: “You’re going to make a crime out of trying to help a nonprofit safety net hospital?”

Prosecutors say Cooper was the beneficiary of a 2014 extortion scheme in which Norcross and his allies allegedly forced a nonprofit to sell its rights to purchase an office complex for just $125,000, rather than partnering with its chosen developer, earning millions of dollars from the deal, and sharing in future profits.

Cooper later bought a 49% stake in the entity that owned the property, known as L-3, and was issued $27 million in state tax credits from 2016 to 2022, the indictment says. The state does not allege that Norcross — whose board position is unpaid — made any money off the deal but says he used his position as Cooper chairman “to increase his profile as a civic leader.”

But as the cameras rolled on Tuesday, there was no talk of extortion or political bosses. After Norcross left the disco party with Ripa, he walked back into the hospital where he is known not as a criminal defendant but as, in the words of Camden Mayor Carstarphen, “Chairman Norcross.”