Mayor Cory A. Booker of Newark, the Democratic candidate for United States Senate in New Jersey, is cutting all ties to an Internet start-up that he founded with money from well-connected figures in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, his campaign announced on Friday.
Mr. Booker’s association with the Internet firm, Waywire, had become an embarrassment for him even as he seems poised to capture the Senate seat in a special election next month.
Critics in both parties sharply questioned the prominent role he had played in forming the company, even while he was the full-time mayor of the state’s largest city — and one of its poorest.
Mr. Booker personally helped obtain money from influential investors — including Oprah Winfrey and Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman — and tapped the expertise of technology moguls and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.
At one point, the firm became tabloid fodder when Andrew Zucker, the 15-year-old son of Jeff Zucker, president of CNN, resigned from a board that advised Waywire, a site whose goal includes making it easier to collect, curate and share videos from the Web.
In a statement, Mr. Booker’s campaign said on Friday that the mayor would be stepping down from Waywire’s board and donating his ownership interest in the company to charity. Mr. Booker, in a financial disclosure statement filed with the Senate, estimated that his interest in the company was worth $1 million to $5 million. But the company is said to be struggling.
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