Cory Booker’s tech startup’s CEO jumps ship

Like rats abandoning the Titanic.

The CEO of Waywire — the startup co-founded by Newark mayor and Senate candidate Cory Booker — is stepping down, TechCrunch has learned. The resignation comes as the company is in the midst of a strategic shift from content creation to content curation, according to a source familiar with the company’s strategy.

Richardson was one of three founding members of the Waywire team, along with Booker and Sarah Ross. According to our source, the company is in search of a new CEO, who is expected to be named shortly. In the meantime, Ross is handling the company’s day-to-day activities and Richardson will remain on the company’s board of directors.

Yeah, a “strategic shift” to the U.S. Senate.

The change in leadership comes as Waywire is at an inflection point in its strategic direction.

Translation: We gotta concentrate on getting Cory elected. And he ain’t got time for no business meetings and corporate stuff, unless you’re bringing contribution checks!

If Bob “Filthy” Filner had a son would he look like Cory Booker?

Because groping appears to be the first thing they teach at How-To-Be-A-Democrat-Mayor school.

Writing for his college paper, Cory Booker once admitted that he groped a friend when he was 15 years old.

Now the mayor of Newark and a candidate for New Jersey’s open Senate seat, a college-aged Booker described the experience of grabbing the girl’s breast and having his hand pushed away.

Cue Amanda Marcotte and #WarOnWomen in 3… 2… 1…

He attempted to explain his behavior. “Ever since puberty, I remember receiving messages that sex was a game, a competition. Sexual relations were best achieved through luck, guile, strategy or coercion.”

Oh, so he’s more like Bill Clinton then.

Cory Booker is still on his old law firm’s payroll, and he sends them lucrative city contracts

But he “quit” the firm when he got elected mayor to avoid “the appearance of impropriety.”

Five years of “severance pay?” Yeah, that’s “confidential.”

Cory Booker pocketed “confidential” annual payouts from his former law firm while serving as Newark mayor.

Booker, the front-runner in New Jersey’s Senate race, received five checks from the Trenk DiPasquale law firm from 2007 until 2011. During that time, the firm raked in more than $2 million in fees from local agencies over which Booker has influence.

Booker worked at the West Orange firm for five years, leaving in 2006 when he was elected Newark’s mayor to avoid “the appearance of impropriety.”

Since 2007, the firm has raked in at least $1,287,639 in legal fees from Newark’s Housing Authority, $554,663 from a local wastewater agency, and $212,318 from the Newark Watershed, records show.

Soon after becoming mayor, Booker appointed Modia Butler — the head of a nonprofit that he organized, Newark Now — to the authority board. Butler later became board chairman.

Elnardo Webster, a former law partner at the firm — and longtime Booker friend and political adviser — serves as the Watershed’s attorney. Booker served on the Watershed’s board.

In 2008, a company run by relatives of another ex-law partner, Richard Trenk, bought a 5-acre plot from the authority to build a commercial heliplex, The Star-Ledger reported. While Trenk had a $500,000 contract with the authority to work on redevelopment issues, the agency said the lawyer wasn’t involved in the deal with his uncle and two cousins.

Nope, no “appearance of impropriety” there. Just business as usual in Newark.

Corry Booker is Sharpe James with better PR.

Cory Booker’s internet startup is set to flame out the day after the election

Well, it turns out 15-year-old whiz kids aren’t the best choice to run an internet startup. Cory Booker’s Waywire venture is destined for the ash heap of internet irrelevancy — it’s losing money faster than an Obama Green Jobs program — and staffers are bolting for the exits. But it’ll keep afloat, barely!, until the day after New Jersey’s special U.S. Senate election so Cory can save face.

Waywire will likely remain in business only until after Booker’s widely anticipated election to the US Senate so that he doesn’t look bad before the voters, sources said.

A potemkin tech “success” for the guy who’s all flash and no substance. Waywire will be cast aside just as soon as it’s no longer needed to burnish Booker’s hipster cred.

“He’s so cool, he runs into burning buildings to save people!” someone gushed to me last night. Because that’s a trait we all yearn for in our superheroes senators. “He has people for that” I replied, until I remembered how many firemen he laid off.

I wonder if any of them got Waywire stock options?

Would the CNN boss’ son work for Steve Lonegan too?

Andrew Zucker, the teenage son of CNN Head Honcho Jeff Zucker, is no ordinary 15-year-old.  In fact he’s such a media mogul in his own right he got hired onto the board of directors of a well-capitalized tech startup founded by Newark Mayor and NJ senatorial candidate Cory Booker. He even gets stock options.

How convenient.

CNN’s coverage and Booker’s politics align nicely, don’t they? This is probably not an accident. They’re all one big incestuous family.

Young Master Zucker promptly resigned his sinecure once the details were revealed by a mere blogger. Pity that the old guard lame-stream media never took an interest in his entrepreneurial esprit. He’ll undoubtedly keep those stock options though.

Steve Lonegan for U.S. Senate. Because he’s not in bed with the clown show that got us into this mess in the first place.