Booker Wasted Zuckerberg Money, Conservative Super PAC Says

While Cory Booker is set to receive the benefits of Oprah Winfrey’s appearance at a fundraising dinner for his U.S. Senate campaign Thursday, a conservative Super PAC launched a new ad accusing the Newark mayor of squandering a $100 million gift announced three years ago on Winfrey’s television talk show.

The American Commitment Action Fund, which has pledged to spend $100,000 in a campaign to attack Booker in his bid for U.S. Senate, launched a new web video Thursday criticizing the two-term mayor for "a record of failure" in Newark schools.

American Commitment Action Fund, is the PAC arm of the nonprofit conservative-leaning American Commitment group.

The ad highlights a $100 million pledge from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for Newark schools that was announced three years ago on Winfrey’s show. The ad says that money was squandered, pointing to a high drop out and low literacy rates in the school system.

"Cory Booker was given all the resources a mayor could possibly dream of for education, with millions in private funding on top of already staggering per pupil spending of $23,000. But he still failed Newark and its students," Phil Kerpen, the super Pac’s founder, said in a release.

The ad talks to Newark residents who say they’ve seen no difference in their schools from the Zuckerberg money.

"The $100 million needs to be for desks, books, and the kids’ education," a man in the ad says. "And we don’t see anything."

The ad says the Booker attempted to hide where the money had gone, until an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit forced Booker to release documents showing that millions of that money had been spent on consultants and focus groups.

"Oprah’s star power and fundraising prowess can't paper over the truth that Cory Booker has squandered a $100 million gift and failed Newark," Kerpen said in the release.

Booker's camp noted that the mayor has limited authority over the school system and blasted the ad as misleading.

"This laughable and deeply misleading ad denigrates the efforts of thousands of people who work hard every day to improve Newark’s public schools," said Kevin Griffis, Booker spokesman. "The giving Mayor Booker has attracted is making a difference in the lives of Newark’s children, and the evidence is everywhere, from funding in the breakthrough teacher’s contract that rewards great teaching to longer school days to a 61 percent increase in pre-schoolers in district classrooms to the launch of an innovation fund that supports teachers who have new ideas for enriching classroom learning."

This is the second web-only ad from American Commitment. The first was launched last month and criticized Booker’s leadership as mayor on a number of fronts.

The ad was launched on a website the group has dedicated to Booker’s defeat, bookerfail.com. The website at first spelled Booker’s first name as “Corey.’’ There is no “e” the mayor’s first name.  The mistake was later corrected.

Booker is the odds-on favorite in the Aug. 13 Democratic special primary election. The two-term mayor leads his competitors – U.S. Reps. Frank Pallone (D-6) and Rush Holt (D-12), as well as state Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-34) by at least 40 percentage points.

The winner of the primary will face off on Oct. 16 with the winner of the GOP primary, which pits former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan against Somerset County physician Alieta Eck. Lonegan leads by double digits in the latest polling.