New Jersey Senator Cory Booker (D) is a telegenic, likable, and media-celebrated candidate. He's also struggling in the polls in an election race that, on paper, he should be running away with. That said, the liberal media this year have largely failed to cover Booker's campaign or the federal investigation into shady dealings under Booker's watch when he was Newark mayor.
So that's why we must give kudos to Olivia Nuzzi, who explains "The Ugly Truth About Cory Booker, New Jersey’s Golden Boy" in an October 20 article for the Daily Beast, noting how potentially-criminal ethical lapses from his mayoralty of the city of Newark may be hurting him (emphasis mine):
...Booker is actually having to put up a fight to be more than just a congressional seat-warmer.
The alleged FBI and U.S. Attorney investigations into the Newark Watershed may have something to do with that. Months after he first entered the Senate, the New Jersey comptroller alleged that under Booker’s watch—or, more likely, because he was not watching—corruption ran rampant at a publicly funded water-treatment and reservoir-management agency, where Booker’s former law partner served as counsel. And speaking of his former law career: Despite having resigned from his law firm once entering the mayor’s office, Booker received annual payments until 2011, during which time the firm was profiting handsomely off of Brick City. That would be the Brick City that Booker professed to love with the fire of a thousand suns, but did little to fundamentally change. Murder, violent crime, unemployment, and taxes all rose dramatically under his stewardship.
So even though it seems plausible that [Republican challenger Jeff] Bell is a Democratic plant sent to further weaken the Republican Party in New Jersey, Booker—celebrity, super hero, motivational tweeter—is barely polling above 50 percent.
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[As Newark mayor] Booker made himself available to his constituents—through social media, by phone, on the street late at night—and when they sounded the Booker-signal, he would personally address their problems. Cat in the tree? He would get it down. Car stuck in the snow? He would shovel you out. Dog freezing to death outside somewhere? He would warm it up. Natural disaster ruined Halloween for your kids? He would give them candy. Dying in a fire? He would carry you to safety.
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.
But even if it were Sharpe James-type shit, it could never overshadow the Cory Booker-type shit that made him so beloved: his sincere delivery of corny tropes about Believing In Yourself and Finding The Good In Others, his knack for remembering names, and his Clintonian ability to connect with any and every individual who makes contact with his big, hazel eyes—be they a drug addict, a hedge-fund manager, or a small child staring up at his 6’3” frame like he is some holy cross between LeBron James and Zeus. It was always assumed that Booker would be moving on to something bigger than Newark—to the governor’s mansion, it seemed obvious, but then that didn’t look like such a great idea: The fall before Chris Christie’s reelection campaign brought Hurricane Sandy, and with it, approval ratings so high for him that Jesus Christ himself could have sailed down from the heavens and won the Democratic nomination, only to be stomped out by Christie come Election Day.
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According to reports by The Star-Ledger and New York Post, the Watershed is being investigated by both the U.S. Attorney and the FBI. “The senator has not been contacted by the authorities,” Alvarez said, adding that he is only aware of the investigations “now, because it has been reported in the press.” In a recent interview with NJTV, Booker called the Watershed, “one of the big policy losses that I had in Newark.”
The police vehicles take off from the parking lot with Booker and Fulop in tow. Some supporters keep pace, and others trail behind walking, there to observe Booker in the flesh more than for the cardio. “He’s the hardest working senator there,” Donna Streeter, a middle-aged woman from New Brunswick tells me. She has brought her two teenaged children with her to see the man she says inspired her to care about politics. Streeter thinks Booker should challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2016. “I think he’s ready. He’s qualified,” she says, slightly out of breath.
First, Booker will have to get past Bell, who arrived back in the Garden State in February following 30 years spent in Fairfax, Virginia. Bell worked in both the Nixon and Reagan administrations. His platform mostly consists of his desire to return to the gold standard—something polls show New Jersey residents do not care about—but he sometimes pivots to foreign policy (he’s a neocon) and his disdain for the welfare state.
On a sunny afternoon in late September, I traveled to Bell’s brother’s home in Fort Lee (of Bridgegate fame) to interview the candidate. He answered the door—bespectacled and tall, with shoulders so large and exacerbated by his out-of-date blazer that it looks as though he is being carried around by a clothes hanger—and stepped outside with palms facing forward, as if he thought he was about to be shot. Everything that occurred beyond the door, he said—the entire interview—would have to be off the record.
All of that, and the fact that hardly anyone within the state knows who the hell Bell is, and Booker is only polling modestly. After hovering around 42 percent all summer, with a Senate approval rating of 47 percent, Booker only just cracked 50 percent in a Monmouth University poll.
