Lisa McCormick says she is angry that a state panel has recommended that New Jersey keep its minimum wage at $7.25 per hour on the same day it was announced that a top Republican political insider was given a $230,000 job at Rutgers University.

Peter J. McDonough Jr., former Republican Gov. Christine Todd Whitman’s communications director, was appointed Rutgers University’s vice president for public affairs at an annual salary of $230,000.

The same day, the Minimum Wage Advisory Commission recommended that New Jersey’s minimum wage remain at $7.25 an hour.

Union County Democrat Lisa McCormick, a candidate for State Legislature in the June primary election released the following statement:

At this difficult economic time, the most immediate and realistic opportunity to achieve economic justice for New Jersey’s 133,600 minimum wage workers, the working poor, is to advance the minimum wage.
“I would like to see Labor Commissioner Harold J. Wirths, Philip Kirschner, head of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, or JoAnn Trezza, vice president of Arrow Group Industries, trying to live on $15,000.
These commissioners have the audacity to suggest that people who earn about a tenth of their income, and possibly less, do not deserve a raise.
Meanwhile, Gov. Chris Christie is silent on a quarter-million-dollar patronage plum awarded to a GOP politician.
The overall cost of living in New Jersey is higher than the national average by as much as 36 percent, while housing costs are up to 78.4 percent higher than the national average.
The federal Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 gradually raised the minimum wage from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour, and about 17 states set the lowest pay level greater than New Jersey, with the highest being $8.67 in Washington.
There is a class war being waged in this country but only one side is armed and engaged in battle, and I am running for State Legislature because it is about time that someone started fighting for the shrinking middle-class.