TRENTON – Today, Stuart Meissner, candidate for U.S. Senate, responded to reports that he was dropping out of the Democratic presidential primary:

“For months, New Jersey taxpayers have footed the bill for his Presidential campaign folly—a vanity project that did nothing except feed Cory Booker’s exceptionally large ego,” said Stuart Meissner. “Now, after missing 65% of his Senate votes and treating New Jerseyans like second-class citizens as compared to voters in Iowa, Cory Booker will come back and arrogantly demand that the people of our State keep him as its U.S. Senator. Well, I’ve got news for Cory: I’ve travelled all around this state and heard from voters who say that they’re not your consolation prize.”

As a reminder, here is what he left behind in New Jersey:

• Under Booker’s leadership, a State Comptroller report found “rampant abuse of public funds and no meaningful oversight at the semi-public agency tasked with treating and delivering water to North Jersey, the Newark Watershed Conservation and Development Corporation.” The director, a Booker appointee, of the NWCDC is currently in jail for a $1 million kickback scheme that attempted to steer contributions to then-Mayor Booker’s campaign. The result of his greed and incompetence has been a water crisis that poisoned the citizens of Newark.
• Booker vowed  to implement “zero-tolerance policing,”  but violent crime in Newark rose by 33% under his watch.
• When he came into office, Booker promised to make Newark a ‘model of urban transformation,’ and yet, the New York Times calls it “an emblem of poverty.”
• Booker squandered a $100 million grant from Mark Zuckerberg to improve Newark schools. According to The New Yorker, “More than twenty million dollars of Zuckerberg’s gift and matching donations went to consulting firms…The going rate for individual consultants in Newark was a thousand dollars a day.”