Cory Booker Burns Through More Key Staff Members

Cory Booker may have one of the highest profiles of any member of the U.S. Senate, but he certainly has trouble keeping the staff members who cultivate that image. 

City & State has learned exclusively that Beth DeFalco, who left her job as City Hall reporter for the New York Post in June of this year to become Booker’s director of communications, quietly departed from that post last week. DeFalco, who by one insider’s count was Booker’s sixth director of communications over the last seven years, leaves on the heels of Louisa Terrell, who had served as Booker’s chief of staff since he was elected to the Senate in a special election last October until up to a few weeks ago, when she also stepped away from Booker’s office without any announcement.

Neither DeFalco nor Terrell could be reached for comment, and a spokesperson for the senator did not immediately respond to multiple emails seeking an explanation for the staffers’ departure. 

In a June 12 press release announcing DeFalco’s hiring, Sen. Booker said, “I am pleased that Beth has decided to bring her New Jersey experience and talent to our team and look forward to working with her,” Booker said. The release notes that DeFalco had previously covered New Jersey politics starting in 2006, the year Booker was first elected mayor of Newark, as a statehouse reporter for the Associated Press. 

Terrell, who was working as director of public policy at Facebook when Booker hired her, was a splashy hire at the time she joined Booker’s staff. A former special assistant to the president for legislative affairs under President Obama and deputy chief of staff to then-Sen. Joe Biden, Booker said in an Oct. 2013 statement announcing her hiring, “Louisa has experience in the White House, the halls of Congress and in the private sector, and I’m thrilled she will be building and leading a Senate team that will work every day to get things done for the people of New Jersey.”

Booker was reelected to the U.S. Senate for his first full-term earlier this month.