The moderate-liberal Democratic mayor of Newark, N.J. has raised more than $250 million in private donations to his poverty-plagued city. From Bloomberg: "Facebook (FB) Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg pledged
$100 million for education to aid a school system that’s been
under state control since 1995 and where just 61 percent of
students graduate high school. The Silicon Valley billionaire
chose Booker’s cause of school reform in 2010 after meeting him
at the Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, that year. Billionaires Nicolas Berggruen, founder of investment firm
Berggruen Holdings Inc., and Leon Cooperman, CEO of New York-
based investment partnership Omega Advisors Inc., are among
others funding what Booker pitches as 'a city of emergent
hope.'"
More: "'The legacy I want to leave is to be the first time in a
generation that the city’s not dependent on big lump-sum
government payments,' Booker says in Jersey City during a May
heat wave, dabbing his shaved head and gulping Diet Pepsi over
ice. The state, which has reduced budget grants to distressed
cities since Christie took office in 2010, helped Newark last
year with $32 million in aid. Booker says such gifts won’t be
needed as Newark’s tax base broadens."
