New Jersey Senator Cory Booker hasn’t been the mayor of Newark since 2013. But when he walks around his neighborhood, you’d never know it. One passer-by yelled out, “The best mayor ever!”
“Thank you, brother! Thank you,” Booker replied.
Another man came up and gave Booker a hug. Asked how he knew he could hug a senator, the man replied, “Because it’s him, and he’s always like that.”
Booker says it is still the best compliment when people call him Mayor.
CBS News
Booker’s parents, who were IBM executives, raised him and his brother in the predominantly White suburb of Harrington Park, New Jersey. He played football at Stanford on a full scholarship; attended Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar (where our paths crossed briefly); and graduated from Yale Law School.
And when it came time to put down roots, he made Newark his home. “This is the community that saw things in me I didn’t see in myself,” he said.
At 29, he became the youngest person ever elected to the Newark City Council. But he quickly grew frustrated: “I literally was on the verge of quitting because I couldn’t get anything done in city hall.”
So, he took a different approach. In the summer of 1999 (as reported by CBS News at the time), he pitched a tent in front of a crime-infested housing project to get more police protection. The city was shamed into action.
That success fueled his desire to run for higher office. Reflecting on the mayoral campaign he ran (and lost) in 2002, he laughed, “If you were gonna have a spectacular failure, my best advice is to have a documentary team there to capture it!”
The Oscar-nominated film “Street Fight” documented his race against incumbent Mayor Sharpe James, who referred to Booker as White, gay, Jewish, and Republican. “That’s why I sometimes look at Trump’s outrageousness and say, ‘You don’t know anything about hard-nose politics of insult,'” Booker said. “I was forged in Brick City! Newark is the toughest place in politics ever.”
After serving two terms as mayor, New Jersey sent him to the Senate.
Last year, Booker spoke on the Senate floor for a record-breaking 25 hours and 5 minutes. He called out the Trump administration, making a passionate appeal to his Senate colleagues, giving voice to everyday Americans as he said, “This is a moral moment in America.”
CSPAN
Asked how he prepared for his marathon speech, Booker replied, “A lot of prayer.” He fasted for three days. “And then, didn’t drink for over 24 hours beforehand,” he said. “But I had cramps, I had numb feet.”
Even at the end of 25 hours, he said he told his staff, “I could go longer.” He described himself as feeling “fired up.”
Booker has also been angered by some Democratic colleagues, whom he has called “complicit.” “I want us to call out the corrupt system,” he said. “A lot of the bad things we’re talking about didn’t start with Donald Trump.”
And while Booker has his critics, who’ve called his record-breaking filibuster a stunt, Booker replied, “I think that if you don’t have critics in life, you’re not doing anything of substance. I think Democrats are the worst communicators sometimes. Frankly, Donald Trump is a master’s class of communication. I don’t like what he says, how he says it. Democrats? I think the political science word is, we suck at communicating.”
Which is why Booker is expressing his hopes in a new book, “Stand,” out this week. In it, he encourages Americans to stand together, reminding us of our shared virtues.
St. Martin’s Press
“We, the people, are the heroes this country needs,” he said. “And the whole story of America is a story of ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things in the cause of our country, in service of their neighbors, loving their neighbors. And love is sacrifice, service, kindness, and grace. Our country is full of that.”
You may be asking, Is this guy for real? “I heard that when I ran for president the first time a lot,” Booker said. “At this point, when we have meanness and cruelty elevated to the highest office in our land, I’m going to do everything I can to match his frequency of hate with a frequency of love.”
As much as he strives to create community, the senator is not without his detractors. Some on the left have been critical of what appears, to them, to be unconditional support of Israel. His response: “Look at what I’m doing. I am the senator right now leading the fight, for example, about settler violence in the West Bank. This is an issue that unfortunately people think is binary. As somebody who has been working to get humanitarian aid to Gaza, to me this is about saving lives, ending the nightmare. There will never be Israeli security without Palestinian autonomy; there will never be Palestinian autonomy without Israeli security.”
And as the standoff in the Senate continues over U.S. involvement in the war with Iran, Booker is calling for hearings and accountability.
Asked if he thinks this war is unconstitutional, Booker stated, “I know it’s unconstitutional, because the fair reading of the Constitution, only the United States Senate has the right to declare war. The president can defend the country if there is an imminent threat, and he has not been able to show what was the imminent threat he was trying to stop.
“Here we have it in the worst I’ve ever seen it,” he said. “We are allowing our president to declare war, to demand a surrender, and not come to Congress.”
So, what is Congress – and Cory Booker – doing about this? “So to me, this is a ‘good trouble’ moment – how can we shut down Senate business-as-usual, and force hearings?” Booker said.
This past week, Booker has been the face of his party’s resistance, so far unsuccessful. And he has also been pushing a bill to help Americans lower their federal income tax.
Politics aside, the 56-year-old has plenty to smile about. Last fall, he married Alexis Lewis in an interfaith ceremony. “I didn’t just wait for the right person to come along,” he said. “I think what I now realize is, I had to become the right person. And it’s just been two years of utter magic.”
This fall, he’s up for reelection in New Jersey, but he’s already thinking about what comes next. We asked about a man who’d approached him on the street with socks emblazoned with “Cory Booker 2028,” and asked, if people will be wearing those socks two years from now.
CBS News
“I am going to be – I’m telling you right now – a part of the fight in 2028,” he replied. “It’s time for another sort of big moment in America, for us to seize, reclaim, and redeem the dream of America. What I’m doing as a part of that, I’m not sure yet. This isn’t a moment of American decline; this is the moment in that chrysalis of darkness, that we are about to emerge again and soar to new heights.”
READ AN EXCERPT: “Stand” by Cory Booker
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Story produced by Robbyn McFadden. Editor: Ed Givnish.
