1969–present
Latest News: Cory Booker Sets Record for Longest Senate Speech
Senator Cory Booker made history on April 1 after delivering the longest recorded speech on the U.S. Senate floor. The New Jersey Democrat spoke out in protest of the Trump administration’s policies for approximately 25 hours and 5 minutes, surpassing segregationist Strom Thurmond’s 24-hour, 18-minute filibuster against the Civil Rights Act in 1957.
Booker said he had been “very aware” of Thurmond’s record since he was first elected to the Senate in 2013. “Of all the issues that have come up, all the noble causes that people have done or the things that people have tried to stop, I just found it strange that he had the record,” Booker, who is Black, told reporters after the speech. “And as a guy who grew up with legends of the Civil Rights Movement myself, my parents and their friends, it just seemed wrong to me, it always seemed wrong.”
His impassioned speech began at 7 p.m. on March 31. He covered a range of issues, including the economy, social security, healthcare assistance programs, immigration, public education, foreign policy, and freedom of speech. The 55-year-old both started and ended his lengthy address by invoking the late congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis, calling on Americans to create “good trouble.”
“He said for us to go out and cause some good trouble, necessary trouble, to redeem the soul of our nation,” Booker said of Lewis as he closed out his marathon speech. “I want you to redeem the dream. Let’s be bold in America.”
The senator ceded the floor at 8:05 p.m. Tuesday. He later revealed that he prepared by fasting for several days beforehand. He stopped drinking water the night before and only took small sips from two water glasses on his podium while on the Senate floor. Booker refused to sit or use the restroom until he finished the speech.
Who Is Cory Booker?
Democratic politician Cory Booker has represented New Jersey in the U.S. Senate since 2013. The child of civil rights activists, Booker began a career in politics shortly after graduating from law school. He served one term as a city councilman for Newark, New Jersey, before becoming its mayor in 2006. Booker worked to reduce the crime rate, rightsize the budget, and attract outside investment as he made a name for himself on social media and through high-profile appearances. He then won a special election for his Senate seat in 2013 and is currently in his third term. Booker unsuccessfully ran for president in 2020, dropping out before any of the Democratic primary races.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Cory Anthony Booker
BORN: April 27, 1969
BIRTHPLACE: Washington D.C.
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Taurus
Early Life
Cory Anthony Booker was born on April 27, 1969, in Washington D.C. His parents, Cary Alfred and Carolyn Rose Booker, were civil rights activists and among the first Black executives at IBM.
Raised in Harrington Park, New Jersey, young Booker was a high school football star. He went on to attend Stanford University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in sociology. In addition to playing varsity football, Booker served as senior class president and headed a student-run crisis hotline. Upon his graduation from Stanford, Booker was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at the University of Oxford.
He also attended Yale Law School, and while in New Haven, Connecticut, he operated free legal clinics for low-income residents there. Despite his busy schedule, Booker made time to get involved in the National Black Law Students Association and in the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization, serving as a mentor. He received his juris doctor in 1997.
New Jersey Politician
Booker took an interest in local politics, particularly the Newark City Council in New Jersey, after completing his education and moving to Newark. His career as a politician began at age 29. In 1998, he ran against and defeated four-term City Council incumbent George Branch. To call attention to the city’s drug and violence problems, Booker went on a 10-day hunger strike and lived in a tent near the drug-dealing areas. He became known as an advocate of education reform and for proposing council initiatives regarding City Hall transparency, on which he was regularly outvoted 8-1.
But Booker wasn’t discouraged. In fact, instead of running for reelection, he took his ambitions a step further and ran for the mayoral seat against longtime incumbent Sharpe James. During his campaign, his opponent’s supporters called Booker a carpetbagger and said he was “not Black enough” to understand the city; Booker lost the election and instead finished out his council term in 2002.
Following his loss, Booker began establishing nonprofit organizations aimed to provide Newark residents with resources and services to better their communities, including Newark Now. He was making headlines and wasn’t giving up on the chance to lead his home city.
Newark Mayor
Booker ran for the mayoral seat again in 2006 and won. Booker’s tough campaign and promises to battle crime angered several Bloods gang leaders in four New Jersey state prisons: They plotted his assassination, which was then foiled by state investigators.
After Booker assumed office as Newark mayor—the third consecutive Black person to govern the city since 1970—he implemented a number of reforms, including overhauling the police department and improving city services. Through what has been described as one of the largest property-tax increases in the city’s history, Booker’s administration approved a large budget and fixed the city’s structural financial deficit.
He reduced the crime rate significantly during his first term as mayor—even patrolling the streets himself until 4 a.m. Elsewhere, the ambitious mayor implemented pay cuts for top-earning city managers and directors and reduced his own salary by 8 percent. As a result of Booker’s leadership, the city of Newark collected more than $100 million in private philanthropy.
As a member of the nonpartisan Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition, Booker was honored in October 2009 by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. After winning reelection in May 2010, his star continued to rise when he was among the finalists for that year’s World Mayor prize. He placed seventh and was a candidate for the prize again in 2012.
Booker attracted major attention on social media not long into his second term as mayor. In December 2010, a constituent tweeted a request for him to send someone to shovel her elderly father’s driveway. Booker responded, “I will do it myself; where does he live?” He and several other volunteers showed up and shoveled the man’s driveway. Earlier that year, Samepoint LLC released a study that had measured the social media influence of mayors around the country; Booker ranked second.
The Newark mayor made news again in April 2012, when he saved a woman from a house fire and, as a result, suffered second-degree burns on his hands and smoke inhalation. His actions earned him the nickname “super-mayor,” according to the Toronto Sun. The Week news magazine published an issue that month with the headline “Newark’s Cory Booker: America’s most overachieving mayor?”
Higher profile press and events followed. He made many appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show—including one with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, who donated $100 million to the city’s education fund—and spoke about his relationship with then-President Barack Obama. In September 2012, Booker spoke at the Democratic National Convention. His speeches and coverage in the media eventually sparked speculation that he would someday run for president himself. Rumors also began circulating that Booker was considering running for the U.S. Senate, which proved to be true.
U.S. Senator
Booker officially announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate representing New Jersey on June 8, 2013. He hoped to fill the open seat left in the wake of Senator Frank Lautenberg’s death. The Democratic primary began in August, with Booker campaigning against Representative Frank Pallone, Representative Rush Holt, and Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver. With a 40-point lead over runner-up Pallone, Booker won the primary election for the Democratic nomination in August 2013. He soon won the Senate seat, beating out Republican Steve Lonegan in a special election held on October 16, 2013. Booker, then 44, was sworn in two weeks later.
In 2014, election season came around again, and Booker defeated Republican challenger Jeff Bell to hold onto his Senate seat.
In July 2016, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton placed Booker on her short list for possible vice presidential running mates. Although Booker was not Clinton’s VP selection, he was given a primetime speaking position on the first night of that year’s Democratic National Convention. Booker gave a rousing speech that received cheers from the audience when he repeated a refrain from “Still I Rise,” a poem by Maya Angelou: “America, we will rise!”
He also drew a distinction between Clinton and her opponent, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump: “Hillary Clinton knows what Donald Trump betrays time and time again in this campaign: that we are not a zero sum nation. It is not you or me. It is not one American against another American. It is you and I together, interdependent, interconnected with one single interwoven destiny. When we are indivisible, we are invincible.” His speech earned the young Senator a standing ovation and praise as one of the Democratic Party’s rising stars.
During Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing in 2018, Booker released 12 pages of “committee confidential” emails sent by Kavanaugh that dealt with racial inequality, an act that left him in danger of expulsion. “I understand the penalty comes with potential ousting from the Senate,” Booker said. “I openly invite and accept the consequences of my team releasing that email right now.”
The following April, Booker introduced a bill to study the impact of slavery on generations of African Americans and the possibilities of reparations for descendants of slaves. It came a few months after a companion measure was introduced in the U.S. House by Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas in January. “This bill is a way of addressing head-on the persistence of racism, white supremacy, and implicit racial bias in our country,” Booker said. “It will bring together the best minds to study the issue and propose solutions that will finally begin to right the economic scales of past harms and make sure we are a country where all dignity and humanity is affirmed.”
2020 Presidential Bid
On February 1, 2019, the first day of Black History Month, Booker announced via an email to supporters that he was running for president in 2020. He sought to project a unifying image in an accompanying video, noting: “The history of our nation is defined by collective action; by interwoven destinies of slaves and abolitionists; of those born here and those who chose America as home; of those who took up arms to defend our country, and those who linked arms to challenge and change it.”
Despite his notable public profile, Booker was unable to generate significant momentum as the campaign season progressed. Polls favored his Democratic competitors in former Vice President Joe Biden, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, as well as the upstart Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg. Late in the year, Booker failed to qualify for the sixth Democratic debate, an ominous sign for his hopes of capturing the party’s nomination.
In January 2020, after falling short of qualifying for that month’s debate, Booker announced he was suspending his presidential campaign.
Ex-Girlfriend Rosario Dawson
Booker has never been married. He has been tight-lipped about his relationships, though it was confirmed in March 2019 that he was dating actor Rosario Dawson. The couple first met the year prior at a mutual friend’s political fundraiser. They ran into each other again in October 2018 and fell into a long conversation.
“I had trouble asking for her phone number,” Booker later said about the end of the night. “I think I said something really stupid like, ‘Uh, how would I get in touch with you?’ And she mercifully said something like, ‘Oh, you want my phone number?’ And my insides were like, ‘Hell, yeah!’”
As their relationship progressed, Dawson moved in with Booker in New Jersey. However, the couple had ultimately broke up by February 2022.
Quotes
- We will make a city hall that truly serves the people who live there.
- If you want someone in Washington that plays by the same old rules, you should find someone else.
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