Cory Booker: the inexorable rise of Newark's neoliberal egomaniac

A scathing and rather unflattering portrayal of Newark's Mayor Cory Booker, written by Jason Farago of the Guardian, appeared online earlier this week. This critical critique of Booker is pretty harsh and not at all off-base.

 "..it seems far more likely that the next senator from New Jersey will be the anti-Lautenberg: a neoliberal egomaniac who sees government as nothing more than a charity for billionaires and corporations to support as they please. There may be no stopping the rise and rise of Cory Booker. But let's at least recognize his impending triumph for what it is: another victory for the men in the glass towers, enabled by a nonstop publicity campaign waged 140 characters at a time."

Once you dig beneath Booker's superhero, social media persona, the true Cory Booker starts to emerge. His real record in Newark, I'm sorry to say, isn't that impressive and his critics are many. Rush Holt and Frank Pallone, his opponents for the open US Senate seat, are already knocking his record on education, something that Jason Farago also pointed out when asking whatever happened to the $100M Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gave the city of Newark for improvements to its school system.

Booker's campaign to become the Junior Senator of New Jersey isn't going to be an easy one, he is going to have to answer some very tough questions from Holt, Pallone and Sheila Oliver, all of whom wanting to succeed Frank Lautenberg for his open seat.