The brother of U.S. Senator Cory Booker said it’s “not true” family connections helped him land a $150,000 job in New Jersey’s Department of Education even though he led a failed charter school ordered to shut down for poor performance.

In an interview with the TV show “Jersey Matters with Larry Mendte” scheduled to air on MeTV Saturday, Cary Booker said he was surprised by questions about his qualifications.

“Yes, running a charter school is a difficult job, and I certainly took my lumps,” Cary Booker said. “We got up every day and we worked hard at it. We tried to do the best we could for those kids."

Cary Booker was named an assistant state education commissioner overseeing the Division of Early Childhood Education in June, less than a week before Gov. Phil Murphy stumped for Cory Booker’s presidential campaign in Iowa.

Cary Booker, who is two years older than his famous brother, previously served as the New Jersey governor’s senior policy advisor for education and worked on Murphy’s campaign before that.

An NJ Advance Media investigation published in July found that Cary Booker has no experience working in early childhood education aside from his time co-founding and leading Omni Prep Academy, a Memphis, TN., charter school that “continually failed to meet the most minimal of performance standards," according to state records. The school provided teachers with no textbooks or curriculum when it opened, and it initially struggled to make payroll, leading several teachers to quit after missed paychecks in 2011.

Omni Prep was ordered to close in 2016.

“It was really just, for lack of a better word, a clusterf---. Excuse my French, but it was,” Donnie Houston, a former Omni Prep principal, told NJ Advance Media earlier this year.

Houston, who said he was let go from his position at the school for financial reasons, and others who worked with Cary Booker at Omni Prep told NJ Advance Media his new job in New Jersey appears to be a political move and special treatment for the brother of an influential senator turned presidential candidate.

In the TV interview set to air 5 p.m. Saturday, Cary Booker said his only response to that criticism is his performance in his role in New Jersey.

“I have been back in New Jersey since 2016 continuing to do work around education and education issues,” Cary Booker said. “So, I have no real response ... except my work.”

Meanwhile, Gov. Murphy has defended the hiring of Cary Booker, saying he credits “a lot of the smart policies that we have and continue to pursue to Cary’s work.”

Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter at @realAdamClark. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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