Gee, Cory, you couldn’t have announced yesterday (Thursday), so I could have this profile ready to go today (Friday)? Senator Booker announced his candidacy today. Usually, I post these candidate life experience profiles on Friday, but I will set this one to publish at 5 pm Saturday to give myself time to proofread it.
If you are new to this series, I have been examining each Democratic candidate for President not as to “electability” or even platform, but how each life experience prepares her or him both for the race and, should s/he win, for the actual job of the presidency. I introduced the series here. I look for what sets a candidate apart, for what could connect to voters, and for what is going to be useful in governing. I also look for what could be difficulties in each of those areas. These profiles are not endorsements (although I have made no secret of my own top interest in Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris), but simply an attempt at giving my fellow Kossacks another metric by which to sift this very large field as we enter the primaries. Earlier entries in this series profiled Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro, Tulsi Gabbard, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Jay Inslee, John K. Delaney, Andrew Yang, and Pete Buttigieg.
Senator Booker was one of those candidacies that surprised no one (only the timing of the announcement caught me off guard). He has not formed an exploratory committee or gone on a listening tour. No, this first day of Black History Month, Sen. Booker has jumped in the race feet first, seeking to become the second African-American president, the first president from New Jersey, and the first unmarried president since James Buchanan (probably the only comparison Booker wants with the 15th U.S. President!).
Early Life:
Cory Anthony Booker (b. 1969) was born to Carolyn Rose Jordan Booker and Cary Alfred Booker. He has one sibling, an older brother, Cary Alfred Booker II (b. 1967). His parents were among the earliest black executives at IBM. Booker was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Harrington Park, NJ, an upper middle class suburb 20 miles north of Newark. His parents were active in the Civil Rights Movement and faced discrimination themselves. In fact, they had to win a lawsuit in order to buy a house in a previously all white neighborhood. Booker’s father passed away from Parkinson’s disease in 2013. He remains close to his mother. Unlike several of the other candidates profiled, Booker’s was an intact and stable family which gave him a sense of roots and a strong sense of security and self-worth.
According to Booker, his was a religious household and the family were members of a small African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in New Jersey. The AME Church was founded in 1787 by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones because of discrimination in the (white) Methodist Episcopal Church of that era. The AME Church played a large role in the Underground Railroad, and in the struggle to abolish slavery, as well as the ongoing struggle for equality for Americans of African descent.
This background already gives us clues about the Cory Booker of today: Middle class, but experienced with conflict and hardship. A family tradition of faith and struggle for justice. He had to learn to relate to people across racial and ethnic lines and both stand up for himself and prove himself.
Education:
Booker attended public schools, graduating from Northern Valley Regional High School at Old Tappan, NJ. He played varsity football and was part of the 1986 USA Today All USA High School football team. I have not found any discussion of Booker’s grades, but he must have been a good student because of his post-secondary career.
For college, Booker went from one coast to the other, enrolling at Stanford University, Stanford, CA where he earned a B.A. in political science in 1991 and an M.A. in sociology in 1992. Booker is now the second Democratic 2020 candidate to be a Stanford alumnus (the first is Julian Castro), giving that great university two shots this year at producing a better U. S. president than Herbert Hoover. Booker played football (tight-end) at Stanford, while also making the All-Pacific 10 Academic Team, and being elected class president, his first foray into electoral politics. Also while at Stanford, Booker was part of a student crisis hotline called The Bridge Peer Counseling Center. As well, he organized Stanford students to help underprivileged youth in East Palo Alto, CA.
Awarded a coveted Rhodes Scholarship, Booker earned a 1st class honors degree (M.A.) in U. S. history at Oxford University (The Queen’s College) in 1994. As of now, Booker is one of two Rhodes Scholars among 2020 Democratic candidates for president, the other being Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, IN. Should Booker win the White House, he will be only the second U.S. president to be a Rhodes Scholar. The first was Bill Clinton, who did not finish an Oxford degree. Education at Oxford (or Cambridge) is quite different from nearly all American colleges and universities. It is far more student directed. Students attend a certain number of lectures throughout their degree. There are no regular tests, nor textbooks. Rather, the bulk of instruction is by a Tutor who assigns books and readings. Students read and write weekly papers about their reading which are discussed individually or in small groups at tutorials, after which students often have to rewrite the paper. At the completion of the program, students sit a series of exams, usually with essay answers, which are both proctored and graded by examiners who have not had the students in class and who do not know which students they are grading. This is why Oxford students are said to “read for a degree.” The process produces self-directed learners, capable of tackling new and complex subjects, analyzing them and synthesizing the knowledge learned—skills that any leader of a nation should find very useful as they digest daily briefings on numerous subjects and must forge coherent policy often in crisis situations.
Studying in a foreign country is invaluable. One learns far more than the subject under study. One interacts with a different culture (although the United Kingdom is closer culturally to the United States than many other nations), learns to see one’s own nation and country from a different perspective. This, too, would be very helpful to any national leader—and a sharp contrast to the pervasive and deliberate ignorance and chauvinism of Donald Trump.
Returning to the United States, Booker earned his Juris Doctor (J.D., the standard law degree in the United States) from Yale Law School in 1997. He passed the bar in both New York and New Jersey, the same year. Yale University has educated five U. S. presidents, second only to Harvard. Three were undergrads at Yale (William Howard Taft, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush), while another two (Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton) were alumni of Yale Law. Note that in the 20 years from 1989 to 2009, the sitting president of the United States had at least one degree from Yale. When one adds the Yalies who were failed presidential candidates (e.g., John Kerry, Hillary Clinton), one sees the outsized footprint that this one Ivy League institution has had on the presidency. That may mean that Booker has been well prepared to join the list of Yale alumni who win the Oval Office, but it could also mean that he has been exposed to a “group think” perspective. His other educational experiences could well offset that, however.
At Yale Law, Booker operated free legal clinics for low-income residents of New Haven, CT. He was also a Big Brother with Big Brothers, Big Sisters of America and was active in the National Black Law Students Association.
From Booker’s educational experiences, I glean at least the following: Like every announced Democratic candidate for 2020, he is extremely intelligent. We have an abundance of riches in this regard. He is self-motivated and strives for excellence. He has had an elite education, but it has been both bi-coastal and international. With a B.A., two M.A.s, and a law degree, he may be the most formally educated of the announced candidates. Booker is intellectually curious, a huge asset to a candidate and a president, and he actively engages the world and other people.
We also see strong social concern expressed at each of his educational institutions. He is not only well rounded (playing sports at a high level), but works to help those who have not had his elite opportunities. Those are qualities I want in a president—and, again, they seem to be found in all our candidates to date.
Pre-Senate Political Career:
Booker had been interested in politics and advocacy his entire life and started planning for this during his time at Yale Law School. In his final year at Yale, he moved to Newark, NJ and commuted to New Haven. After graduation, Booker was a staff attorney for The Urban Justice Center in NYC, and was program director for the Newark Youth Project.
In 1998, Booker upset incumbent George Branch to win a seat on the Newark City Council. During his tenure, Booker often used dramatic tactics to highlight the problems of the city, especially around drugs, violence, and homelessness. He lived in a tent and, later, a motor home while going on a 10 day hunger strike in high drug dealing parts of the city. He proposed council initiatives for low cost housing, aiding young people, more community policing, and better efficiency and transparency at city hall. However, most of Booker’s initiatives were regularly outvoted on the city council.
This was a period when Newark was considered one of the most dangerous cities in the United States and one in which prosperity seemed to be leaving forever. Cory Booker was determined to turn Newark around.
In 2002, rather than run for reelection to the city council, Booker ran for Mayor of Newark against longtime incumbent Sharpe James. James ran a campaign full of mudslinging against Booker, calling him “a Republican (sic) who is taking money from the KKK and the Taliban and is conspiring with Jews to take over Newark.” The James campaigned impugned Booker’s suburban upbringing, calling him a carpetbagger, who was “not black enough” to understand the city. James defeated Booker 53% to 47% in a campaign so dirty that it was the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary, Street Fight.
Losing an election or some other contest can teach lessons never learned by those who win every time. Booker will certainly be prepared for vicious attacks and dirty tricks by either primary or general election opponents.
In 2006, he ran again (Sharpe dropped out and Booker ran against his hand-picked successor) and won. He served two terms as Mayor of Newark: He was reelected in 2010 and served until running for the U.S. Senate in 2012.
As Mayor, Booker moved into a housing project in a high crime neighborhood. He worked to curb drugs and gun violence, especially working for stricter gun laws. He worked to reduce crime without resorting to the “lock ‘em up” mentality that has led to exploding prison populations, racial profiling, the militarization of the police, and the devastation of poor neighborhoods and communities of color. He also continuously pushed for programs for low cost housing and improving Newark’s public schools. He voluntarily reduced his own salary twice as he worked to balance the city budget.
Booker’s tenure as mayor of Newark was very high profile because of his dramatic actions, rescuing a dog abandoned in winter in a cage, rescuing people from a house fire, shoveling snow off the driveway of a constituent who was home bound and on a fixed income and other dramatic actions many considered heroic and others considered simply headline grabbing. Most notable, he drew attention to the plight of those who depend only on food stamps (SNAP) for their food supply by living on the $30 per wk. food budget that is all SNAP provided. Critics claimed that the “S” was for “supplemental” and was never intended to cover all food expenses, but Booker pointed out that far too many do so depend.
But his successes at regenerating Newark are mixed. He got more community policing, but Newark remains known for a high crime rate. He achieved more affordable housing, but the Newark public schools remain under state control and rated poorly. His personal approval ratings were very high, but his successes as mayor were mixed.
United States Senate:
After years of speculation that Booker would challenge New Jersey governor Chris Christie (R), Booker announced in December of 2012 that he would instead seek to primary Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D) in the 2014 election. Instead, Lautenberg announced retirement and then died of pneumonia, and Booker ran and won the special election of 2013, defeating Christie’s appointed Senator, Steve Lonegan. Booker ran and won a full term in 2014.
When he was elected, he became the first African American elected to the U. S. Senate since Barack Obama in 2004, though he was shortly joined by Tim Scott (R-SC) in 2014 and Kamala Harris (D-CA) in 2016.
As Senator, Booker’s voting record has been rated “third most liberal.” He co-sponsored the Employee Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) which would forbid discrimination against LGBTQ persons in employment; co-sponsored the Respect for Marriage Act (2014) which would’ve legalized marriage equality legislatively. He successfully led in bi-partisan legislation to reform criminal sentencing with the First STEP Act of 2018. He is a co-sponsor of the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act.
Booker is known for championing reform of the criminal justice system, and for social justice in many areas. More problematic for Democratic primary voters, he is also well known for defending investment bankers. Specifically, he publicly and loudly disagreed with the Obama campaign’s 2012 attacks on Mitt Romney’s work with Bain Capital, a notable example of “vulture capitalism,” buying up companies to strip them of their assets and then leave them closed and workers unemployed.
Personal:
Cory Booker is unmarried. If elected, he would be the first unmarried president since James Buchanan—and doubtless the only way he would like comparison with Buchanan. Booker has a long history of championing the causes of the LGBTQ community, but has admitted in interviews that, as a teen, he “hated gays.” He has repented of that view. His long status as a bachelor (he’ll be 50 in April) has also led to long rumors that he, himself, is a closeted gay—something not incompatible with his teen-aged homophobia as LGBTQ children often internalize negative messages. He has been seen dating women, though.
In a 1992 column for the Stanford Review, Booker sought to help more men confront their own actions and attitudes. He admitted in that column that, as a teen at a dance trying “cop a first feel,” he placed his hand back on a young woman’s breast after she removed it—in other words, groping her against her will. Booker tried to get his fellow male students to understand that the attitude behind such “stealing of second base” is a pro-rape attitude and must be rejected. I think this was a courageous admission. We aren’t going to get better males until those who are champions of women’s equality (as Booker is) admit that we haven’t always been perfect. Teen aged hetero males, especially those which excel at sports like Booker, are socialized to be sexually aggressive. Creating different patterns starts with confronting our own pasts—and is a welcome contrast to the current White House occupant’s boasting of being a serial sexual assaulter as well as a serial adulterer. (Ironically, right wing media surfaced the article again during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings as if this made Booker and Kavanaugh morally similar, instead of one confronting his past while the other denied his.)
Booker worships at a Baptist church, despite his AME upbringing. Booker seems to have made a personal study of world religions. His desk as Newark Mayor contained “two Bibles, a Tanakh (the Jewish name for the Hebrew Bible), a Torah I’m borrowing, a Qu’ran, a Bhagavad-Gita and African prayer beads.” He is so intimately familiar with the Bible that he has participated in a Festival of Homiletics (preaching) as a lay preacher. At both Oxford and Yale, he participated in groups for Jewish students and has become better versed in Judaism than many secular Jews I know. He has also participated in several Christian-Muslim dialogues. His Facebook feed features quotes from Buddhist and Hindu spiritual perspectives.
He was an interviewee on the PBS TV Series “Finding Your Roots” in which genealogists found some of the white ancestors to Booker (a very fair skinned African-American with green eyes), including a direct ancestor who was a Confederate soldier. He also found African-American ancestors involved in justice struggles before him.
Some speculate that Booker could be the candidate for the Religious Left. As someone who considers himself part of the Religious Left, Booker is not my first choice for POTUS, but I find his comfort with speaking about not only his own faith, but the spiritual perspectives of other faiths he has studied to be a strength. It could help him as a candidate, but also, if elected, to relate to our increasingly religiously plural nation and our world. Booker rightly says that progressives too often cede the language of faith to conservatives. He understands that a strong defense of church-state separation is perfectly compatible with acknowledging the spiritual strengths that have guided most struggles for social justice.
Booker exercises regularly, including daily runs, weights, and other exercises. He neither smokes nor drinks. Since 1992, he has been a vegetarian. Since 2014, he has adopted a vegan diet. So, if elected, he would be our most physically fit president in some time. His vegan lifestyle is related to both his health concerns and his view of the moral standing of animals. This could well appeal to many on the campaign trail, but it is bound to alienate other voters, especially those involved in the beef, dairy, pork, and chicken industries.
When not in Washington, D.C., he continues to live in low cost housing in Newark and donates much of his income to charities and social justice causes.