Cory Booker

By Kenneth P. Doyle (Bloomberg Government) -- Cory Booker likes to talk about how government should be driven by a “conspiracy of love” for everyone, but the liberal Democrat found that philosophy sorely tested in the era of President Donald Trump with Republicans in the Senate majority. With Democrats holding the White House and a narrow Senate majority, Booker is part of a broad-based leadership team assembled by Majority Leaders Chuck Schumer, serving as Vice Chair of the Policy and Communications Committee of the Democratic Caucus. Though he failed to gain traction in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries he remained popular in New Jersey, which re-elected him to the Senate with 57% of the vote after he dropped out of the presidential race. He returned to Capitol Hill for third term with a higher profile and an ally in the White House. “I love Joe Biden,” Booker told CBS after endorsing Biden in 2020. “Some of my biggest issues, like criminal justice reform, like racial justice, like economic justice, he is going to be a strong leader on that.” Committee and Legislative Highlights * Booker drew bipartisan praise for his work on a 2018 criminal justice law that reduces sentences for nonviolent offenders and offers job training for prisoners to help them succeed once released. It was “perhaps one of the greatest honors of my life, easily one of the greatest honors as a senator,” he said on the Senate floor. Schumer now is backing Booker’s proposal to legalize marijuana, which Booker said “is necessary to right the wrongs of our failed drug war and end decades of harm inflicted on communities of color.” * Booker has used his position on the Senate Judiciary Committee to highlight criminal justice changes. He’s also a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, Small Business Committee, and Agriculture Committee, where he chairs the subcommittee Food and Nutrition, Specialty Crops, Organics, and Research. When named to that position at the beginning of the 117th Congress, Booker said he would work to reform a “fundamentally broken” food system that favors big agriculture conglomerates while “family farmers continue to struggle and tens of millions of families face food insecurity and a lack of access to affordable, nutritious food.” Politics and Personality * Booker hardened his liberal profile during Trump’s presidency. He was among five Democrats who voted against an agreement on government spending and border security that prevented a partial government shutdown and 16 Democrats who voted against a bipartisan deal to end a brief shutdown brought on largely by a deadlock over efforts to extend protections to “Dreamers” -- young people brought to the country illegally by their parents. * Previously, he went to great lengths to show commitment to bipartisanship as mayor of Newark and during his early days in the Senate. However, Booker has always been a reliable Democratic vote who gets high marks from liberal groups. * Booker has been a steadfast advocate for New Jersey, where he grew up, assailing Trump administration proposals to open some U.S. coastal waters, including those off New Jersey, to oil and gas drilling. He’s also working to get federal funding for a long-delayed, massive project to build new railroad tunnels connecting New York and New Jersey. Road to Office Booker says his interest in public service began early. As the family story goes, while riding in his parents’ car to church services in Newark one Sunday in the 1970s, he spotted a man painting and asked his father whether the family could help coat the whole decaying city. His hometown, Harrington Park, is 28 miles north of Newark. The family drove into the city each Sunday because there were no black Baptist churches in their suburb. The Bookers — IBM executives Cary and Carolyn and their sons, Cary and Cory — were among its few Black residents. His parents’ own childhoods in the South weren’t so privileged, and they raised their sons on their stories of civil-rights activism: marching and boycotting for civil rights in the 1960s and, when they were transferred by IBM to the New York area, threatening a lawsuit when a real-estate agent tried to steer them out of an area where they were interested in purchasing a home. The elder Booker lived to see his son become mayor of Newark, and died just six days before the 2013 Senate special election after a long bout with Parkinson’s disease. Booker attended Stanford University, where he played tight end on the football team, was elected senior class president and earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in sociology. After attending Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, Booker got a law degree from Yale. In 1996, while still at Yale, Cory Booker moved to Newark, where one-third of the residents live in poverty. After graduation he became an attorney for the Urban Justice Center, a New York City-based legal service for the poor. “I’m the only senator who goes home to a low-income, inner- city community,” Booker said in his presidential campaign announcement video. He won election to the Newark City Council in 1998, when he was 29. After one unsuccessful try for mayor, he was elected to that office 2006. Booker’s tenure as mayor of Newark was punctuated by high-profile events, including his successful lawsuit against the previous administration’s redevelopment actions, an aborted assassination plot against him, and efforts to get guns off the city’s streets. He also made headlines when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg pledged $100 million to improve Newark’s schools. He describes himself as a master networker, and some of his best connections have been classmates from Stanford. Some of those pals flourished in finance or technology, particularly social media. They were his entree to national exposure and a campaign financing pipeline that included Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg and Ben Affleck, along with Netscape founder Marc Andreessen and Christie Walton, an heiress to the Wal-Mart fortune. As mayor, he refused to officiate at weddings as long as same-sex couples in the state didn’t have the same right to marry. That changed in October 2014, when he officiated for seven gay and two heterosexual couples on the first day of legal same-sex marriage in New Jersey. In December 2012, Booker declared his intention to run for the Senate, even though the incumbent, Lautenberg, then 88 years old, hadn’t declared a readiness to make way. Lautenberg announced in February 2013 that he didn’t plan to run again and died later that year. Gov. Chris Christie appointed a fellow Republican, Jeff Chiesa, who had been serving as New Jersey attorney general. Booker won a Democratic primary, handily defeated three challengers — two U.S. House members and a state Assembly Speaker. He went on to defeat Republican Steve Lonegan, a former mayor of a small Bergen County borough, in a special election to fill Lautenberg’s seat in October 2013. Booker easily won a full six-year term in 2014 over Republican Jeff Bell, a longtime conservative activist. He was re-elected again in 2020, defeating Republican challenger Rik Mehta, a former consumer safety officer for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Personal Note Booker has never been married and has guarded his private life. But he confirmed in 2019 he’s been in a relationship in recent years with actress Rosario Dawson. “Both of us, you know, we’ve had relationships, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever fully given myself over to a relationship as much as I have with her and allowed myself to be as vulnerable,” Booker told the Washington Post. Updated April 21, 2021 To contact the reporter on this story: Kenneth P. Doyle in Washington at kdoyle@bgov.com To contact the editor responsible for this story: Bennett Roth at broth@bgov.com