Cooper goes to Hawkins office with Lautenberg's good graces
By Max Pizarro, PolitickerNJ.com Reporter
Hawkins Chief of Staff Tai Cooper confers with Codey Chief A.J. Sabath
ORANGE - In a packed auditorium at the Middle School this afternoon, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) saluted the newly sworn-in Mayor Eldridge Hawkins, Jr., and said he couldn’t go wrong with Tahirah "Tai" Cooper as his chief-of-staff.
Formerly Lautenberg’s Cooper senior project specialist out of the senator’s Newark office, Cooper is now officially with the Hawkins administration as the new mayor takes charge of Orange today.
One of the stars on stage paying tribute to the 29-year old Hawkins, Lautenberg sat in between Gov. Jon Corzine and Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex). In the audience were Newark Mayor Cory Booker and East Orange Mayor Robert Bowser.
"Eldridge Hawkins has the character of a visionary, and he sees opportunities for reform here in Orange in education and housing," said Lautenberg.
"He’s young, like me," the 84-year old senator joked, "with plenty of vitality."
A 2003 graduate of Rutgers University and former senior account manager at the MBNA Bank, Cooper grew up in Newark.
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