‘Vote messenger’ working to get out the vote for Republican Jeff Van Drew in Atlantic City generates widespread criticism from local Black community, officials

Editor’s Note: This coverage is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan reporting project covering local election integrity and voting access. It is available for reprint under the terms of Votebeat’s republishing policy.

By JEFF PILLETS, NJ Spotight

Fourteen years ago, Craig Callaway walked out of South Woods State Prison after a 42-month term for bribery committed while serving as the Atlantic City council president.

Federal agents taped Callaway, a Black man with deep roots in the city’s impoverished Black community, taking $10,000 from a contractor in exchange for lucrative work in a public redevelopment project.

Today, and every day through Election Day, Callaway is walking the streets of his native Atlantic City armed with $110,000 in get-out-the-vote money from Jeff Van Drew, the Democrat-turned-Republican who is fighting to retain his seat in South Jersey’s 2nd Congressional District.

“What I do is legal but it’s very expensive — it takes a lot of money,” said Callaway in a phone interview with NJ Spotlight News on Thursday. “In fact, I need a lot more money. We’re out in the streets. We’re hustling.”

Callaway describes himself as a professional “vote messenger.” He says he pays people to go around neighborhoods collecting filled-out ballots and then delivers them to drop boxes or to the local election offices. He usually works for Democrats, and earlier this year even worked for Van Drew’s opponent in the congressional race, Amy Kennedy.

Targeting minority voters

Callaway’s brand of vote hustling has generated widespread contempt from South Jersey’s Black community, and other critics, who say he’s perfected a voter suppression regime that could impact this tight congressional race. Top Democrats say the Callaway controversy reflects broader anxiety in the party that other pockets of minority voters in New Jersey may be targeted this year by similar tactics, or even outright intimidation. Voters are already awash in misinformation, and many are confused about voting in the state’s first almost all-mail general election.

“He’ll go around giving people $20 or $30 for their ballots and then he does what he wants with them — it’s like living in 1954 or something,” said Tanzie Youngblood, a retired schoolteacher from Gloucester County who ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic congressional primary.

“Sometimes he just buys people hot dogs,” Youngblood said. “If you’re dirt-poor, you’re grateful. And a lot of people in Atlantic City are dirt-poor.”

Leading state Democrats say Callaway’s well-known tactics have been copied around New Jersey over the years. His street operation for Van Drew, they say, comes in spite of a new state law passed to limit the work of vote messengers because the practice has been prone to fraud.

“That law came about because of Craig Callaway and the damage his operation has done over the years,” said James Gee, a longtime adviser on race issues who is now chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, a Democrat in New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District.

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