Is Cary Booker, brother of senator and presidential candidate Cory Booker, the latest in a line of political patronage hires by Gov. Phil Murphy?

A recent nj.com article about Cary Booker’s disastrous tenure as co-founder and head of a Memphis, Tenn., charter school suggested as much. The headline on the piece pretty well summed things up: “Cory Booker’s brother opened a school so bad it got shut down. N.J. just gave him a $150K education job.”

Booker co-founded the Omni Prep Academy in 2011. Financially troubled from the start and consistently one of the worst-performing charter schools in Tennessee, the state finally ordered it closed in 2016.

“They had no idea what the hell they were doing,” a former Omni Prep principal said of Booker and his co-founder. “They had no clue, and it was really just, for lack of a better word, a clusterf---. Excuse my French, but it was.”

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Nevertheless, in 2017 Booker was hired as a policy consultant for Gov. Phil Murphy’s gubernatorial campaign. A year later, he was named the administration’s senior education adviser, earning $120,000. And last month, about a week before Murphy campaigned for Cory Booker’s presidential campaign in Iowa, Cary Booker was named to a newly created position in the state Department of Education — assistant commissioner for Early Childhood Education — with a tidy $30,000 hike in salary, to $150,000.

Same old, same old for the Murphy administration? Sure sounds like it.

But to be fair, I wanted to give the state Education Department an opportunity to counter the narrative. I asked a spokesman if there was anything in the nj.com story that was inaccurate, and I offered an opportunity for Booker to respond. I further asked what in Booker's background qualified him to head the Division of Early Education, which focuses on schooling through the third grade. I also asked for a copy of Booker's resume but was told I needed to put in an OPRA request.

They didn't hook me up with Booker, but did send me a one-paragraph statement from him: “In my nearly 30-year professional career, from serving as an Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Rutgers University to Senior Policy Advisor in the Governor’s Office, my first year as the founder and leader of a charter school in Memphis was admittedly the most challenging. Although our school eventually closed, I’m proud of our hard work. Since returning to New Jersey, I’ve had the privilege of being part of a team that has strengthened public education from pre-K through an associates degree. Moving forward, I welcome the opportunity to continue our work to support the development of children in New Jersey.” Booker was associate dean at Rutgers-Newark for four years before setting off for Memphis.

Another one-paragraph statement sent to me on behalf of Education Commissioner Lamont Rapollet vouched for Booker's "skillset, policy background and leadership skills."

So, was this just another you scratch-my-back, I'll scratch-yours patronage hire? Given the Murphy administration's track record on hiring — and Booker's debacle in Memphis — it isn't easy giving Murphy or Booker the benefit of the doubt.

Randy Bergmann, a Westfield native and lifelong resident of New Jersey, has been covering the state as a reporter, editor and opinion page editor for four decades. Contact Bergmann at rbergmann@app.com or 732-643-4034.