DAN KATZ

Lobbyist/cable TV host Jim McQueeny is strongly denying an Inside Edge report that he was one of three people who worked on a plan for U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg’s campaign to buy premium seats to a Bruce Springsteen concert for $108 and resell them to campaign contributors for $1,500. "This story is utterly and completely untrue, but you don't have the balls or the ethics to print the retraction it requires,” McQueeny wrote in a statement, printed in its entirety, to PolitickerNJ.com. “Wally was obviously using this political science fiction in an obvious competition with the X-Files movie opening for bizarre plots. Congrats, Wally, you won!"

Jim McQueeny, a lobbyist who hosts News 12 New Jersey’s Power & Politics, was one of the organizers of U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg’s now controversial plan to buy 40 premium seats to a Bruce Springsteen concert for $108 and resell them to campaign contributors for $1,500. Lautenberg cancelled the fundraiser yesterday after The Record broke a story detailing the event, which involved a deal with the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, a state agency, to obtain concert tickets set aside for VIP’s and political insiders. McQueeny, who served on Lautenberg’s staff in the 1980’s, worked on the event with Dan Katz, the Senator’s Chief of Staff, and Samantha Maltzman, the campaign finance director.

Where does Frank Lautenberg live? If you ask the four-term Senator, he’ll say in his Cliffside Park condo.  But others – not just his rivals – say that when he’s not in Washington, he spends most of his nights at his wife’s New York City apartment.   On May 12, Lautenberg’s office dismissed a Politics1.com report that the concierge at Lautenberg’s apartment said the Senator’s office sends a staffer to pick up his mail each week.  “He picks up his mail himself at the mailroom at his apartment building,” said Dan Katz, Lautenberg’s Chief of Staff, told PolitickerNJ.com.  “When? When he gets there back from Washington at the end of the work week when we are in session or when he is already there when Senate is in recess.”