Mulshine Op-Ed - Cory Booker and big bucks: Perfect together

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http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/08/cory_booker_and_big_bucks_perfect_together_mulshine.html

Cory Booker and big bucks: Perfect together

By Paul Mulshine | The Star Ledger
on August 19, 2014 at 8:30 AM, updated August 19, 2014 at 1:21 PM

Sharpen your pencils, boys and girls. Here’s a little quiz:

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We already knew that Booker was among the very best at getting campaign contributions. He ranks No. 2 on the Center for Responsive Politics "Who Raised the Most?" list for senators, with a staggering $16,171,449 raised in the current cycle. The top three types of contributors were big law firms, big investment firms and big real estate interests.

But it turns out it’s not just his campaign that benefited from those big-buck buddies of his. The report shows Booker received almost $400,000 in speaking fees last year in the nine months before he won that special election for the Senate seat he now holds.

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Now that he is in the Senate, Booker is prohibited from accepting honorariums. But there was no such prohibition on the mayor of Newark. That permitted Booker to fatten himself up nicely for the lean years ahead, when he will have to live on a salary of a mere $174,000.

That’s for an entire year. At the rate Booker was earning money last year, he could have made that much in a week’s worth of speeches.

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UPDATE: Booker's people got back to me with a response. His press person, Beth DeFalco sent this:

A couple of things worth noting:

The senator gave more than $400,000 worth of charitable donations in 2013 - more than he made off of all his speaking engagements combined that year.