Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire who pledged $100 million to help schools in Newark, N.J., will support Governor Chris Christie’s re-election bid by hosting a fundraiser for the first-term Republican.
The event for Christie, 50, will be held at the home of Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, said Sarah Feinberg, a Facebook spokesman. Zuckerberg, co-founder of the world’s largest social-networking service, lives in Palo Alto, Calif.
“Mark and Priscilla have worked closely with Governor Christie on education reform in the Newark school system,” Feinberg said in e-mail. “They admire his leadership on education reform and other issues and look forward to continuing their important work together on behalf of Newark’s school children.”
Zuckerberg, 28, who started his company in a college dorm room in 2004, is expanding his role beyond the day-to-day duties of running Facebook, which has more than 1 billion users.
In 2010, Zuckerberg unveiled plans to donate $100 million to assist schools in Newark, New Jersey’s most populous city. Newark schools, with about 37,000 students, have been under state control since 1995, said Barbara Morgan, a spokesman for Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf.