Newark Star Ledger: Chris Christie And Cory Booker Share Same Key Donors

The corporate education reformers are coming out for both Christie and Booker:

Five dozen wealthy donors from Wall Street to Silicon Valley have placed their bets on both of New Jersey’s big political stars — Republican Gov. Chris Christie and Democratic Newark Mayor Cory Booker — this campaign season, a Star-Ledger review of state and federal records shows.

When the governor and the mayor hit the fundraising circuit in California this year, they collected maximum donations from many of the same tech moguls at gatherings hosted by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, a friend to both men.

When they were home in the Garden State, the two celebrity politicians drew big checks from the same prominent real estate brokers and land developers.

And in New York, Kenneth Langone, the Republican billionaire who pushed Christie to run against President Obama in the 2012 race, has given $5,200 to Booker’s campaign for U.S. Senate this year and $3,800 to Christie’s re-election effort.

In all, 59 people in four states have given to both candidates this year, The Star-Ledger review found. From that donor base, Booker has received $300,550 and Christie has drawn $212,000 — a small portion of their total fundraising hauls: $8.6 million for the mayor and nearly $7 million for the governor.

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Some of their support seems to be issue-based. Two billionaires — Alan Fournier of New Jersey and John Doerr of California — are prominent backers of some of the education policies Booker and Christie espouse.

"It’s really all about education. They both have very strong track records on education reform and trying to help kids," said Fournier, founder of a multibillion-dollar hedge fund based in Summit and co-founder of the nonprofit education group Better Education for New Jersey Kids. "New Jersey has the worst gap between minority students and upper-class suburban kids in the country, and we spend more in New Jersey than most states on a per-pupil basis, but we haven’t gotten the results."

Fournier, who was in the audience last week for Christie’s speech at a KIPP charter schools conference in Las Vegas, applauded Christie’s work tying teacher tenure to student achievement last year. Fournier, a registered Republican, stressed that education reform is a bipartisan effort and noted he also supports Democrats such as Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) and state Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex).

"If you want to make change in New Jersey, it has to be on both sides of the aisle," he said.

Facebook spokeswoman Sarah Feinberg said Zuckerberg "is a longtime supporter of both Christie and Booker, dating back to Mark’s work with both of them on the issue of education reform."

The three worked on a $100 million education initiative for Newark schools — donated by Zuckerberg — that kicked off when they appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 2010.

A vote for Cory Booker is a vote for Chris Christie is a vote for hedge fundie-backed corporate education reform as well as Wall Street-friendly policies that steal money from the little people to give it to the wealthy.

Same goes for Steve Fulop, Booker's Goldman Sachs buddy in Jersey City.