The ugly truth about Cory Booker, New Jersey's golden boy

But much like how giving change to panhandlers will not solve poverty, Booker’s good deeds were not fundamentally changing Newark. Despite ushering in hundreds of millions of dollars in philanthropic donations to the city, and commissioning cosmetic surgery on public parks, Newark seemed no better off under Booker than it had been under James. Having vowed to strengthen the police department, he instead cut it by 13 percent to help balance the city’s budget. Homicides and violent crime spiked dramatically. Unemployment rose and child poverty increased 32 percent. And all of this came at a price of a 20 percent tax hike for the city’s residents.

Few outside of Newark noticed. Booker’s star was rising: Over a million Twitter followers, and half a million fans on Facebook. After saving his neighbor from a blaze (having shut down three of Newark’s fire companies, perhaps no one else was around to do it) Ellen Degeneres invited him on her show to gift him with a Superman costume. He frequently traveled outside of the state (in one year, he was gone about a quarter of the time) to give speeches—nearly 100 in total, including 10 commencement speeches, at Stanford, Brandeis, Williams College, Bard College, Pitzer College, Columbia University’s Teachers College, Suffolk University Law School, New York Law School, Washington University, and Ramapo College. For his oratory work he was paid over $1.3 million (a significant amount of which he donated to charity).

All the while, from 2006 to 2011, Booker was still receiving annual payments, which totaled close to $700,000, from his former law firm—Trenk, DiPasquale, Webster—from which he had resigned once elected mayor to avoid “the appearance of impropriety.” Booker’s campaign spokeswoman, Silvia Alvarez, told me: “He was paid out by the firm as part of his separation agreement for work he performed before he became mayor.” OK, sure, but while Booker was profiting from the firm, they were profiting from Newark: over $2 million in work for Newark’s Housing Authority, the Watershed Conservation Development Corporation, and a wastewater agency. “That’s almost like Sharpe James-type shit,” one New Jersey Democratic operative offered.