BUYING INFLUENCE?
Silicon Valley Elites Enrich Democratic Senate Candidate Cory Booker
By Elizabeth Coady
WITH JUST ONE ONE WEEK TO GO BEFORE NEW JERSEYANS CHOOSE NOMINEES FOR THE U.S. Senate race, the New York Times informed readers of a sweet million-dollar deal that Silicon Valley elites gifted to Newark Mayor Cory Booker.
Booker, a rising star in Democratic politics, has received an undisclosed amount of money from Google’s Eric Schmidt and other influential investors for his “video curating” service known as Waywire. From The New York Times:
“…In a financial disclosure filed last month, Mr. Booker, 44, revealed that his stake in the company was worth $1 million to $5 million. Taken together, his other assets were worth no more than $730,000. That revelation…shows how a few tech moguls and entrepreneurs, many of them also campaign donors, not only made a financial bet on the mayor’s political future but also provided the brainpower and financing to help create a company that could make him very rich.
In financial disclosure forms filed last month, Booker listed his worth in Waywire between $1 million to and $5 million dollars; the value of all his other assets totals $730,000. In addition, donations to his 2013 Senate company from tech executives and employees totals $700,000.
Book declined to talk to the Times about his financial interest in the company, but did say of the opportunity: “What was exciting to me was that it was expanding entrepreneurial, economic, and educational opportunities for so many.”
But Schmidt, a bundler for Barack Obama who was in the President’s Chicago “boiler room” on election night 2012, told the paper “Cory introduced me to the team and I liked their approach.”
One fact in the Times‘ piece has already become outdated: Just hours after the paper revealed that Booker had put the 15-year-old-son of CNN President Andrew Zucker on Waywire board, replete with stock options, news broke that Andrew Zucker had resigned because of a “conflict of interest.” But the Times piece was hardly the first publication to mention Zucker’s appointment. The Hollywood Reporter published the details of Booker’s appointment back in March.
While the Times piece manages to raise the issue of a conflict of issue in the blandest of terms, many of the paper’s commentators didn’t shy away from labeling the relationship.
“I smell another crooked American politician is on his way to Washington, D.C.,”
“Mr. Booker, being a politician and an entrepreneur simultaneously sends the wrong message, especially when you entered into this business AFTER becoming an elected official,” scolded a ‘DayDreamer’ from Philadelphia. “Waywire should have been named Wayward, as it has no chance of succeeding and would have never been funded had Booker not been an elected official.”
But Bill Gilwood of San Dimas, Calif. was even more direct, writing: “Booker’s stake is a bribe. He gets money, the bribers er ‘donors’ or ‘partners’ get control and access over public policy, at the expense of the voters. This is blatant graft…”
Booker holds a “massive lead” in the special Aug. 13 primary election being held to fill the seat held by Senator Frank Lautenberg, who died at age 89 in June.
