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| Cory Booker enters the race for president. |
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) is the next contender in a supposedly crowed race. The New Jersey senator is the next high profile contender in a race that could split the party's corporate wing from the party's progressive base.
Donald J. Trump has a 70% chance of winning reelection. So the Democrats have a lot of work to do.
They cannot win on the white working class voters. They need to get the voters who are tired of the "status quo" in politics. The status quo of politics will continue as long as the junk food media continues to put on agitators who divide us for profit.
Do you believe Cory Booker ready for to be President of the United States?
Booker chose the first day of Black History Month to launch his campaign, timing that nods to Booker's own heritage and suggests he will put it at the center of his pitch to voters.
"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," Booker narrates in a video released on Friday morning, which features him walking through his Newark neighborhood.
"I'm Cory Booker and I'm running for president of the United States of America," he says in the video.
Booker joins a crowded and growing Democratic field that is already the most diverse in history -- with multiple women, one gay candidate, a Latino and, with Booker now in the mix, two black candidates.
His announcement comes nearly a year to the day from the Iowa caucuses and the start of the primary calendar. Booker plans to head to Iowa February 8-9 and then to South Carolina on February 10. He also intends to visit New Hampshire over Presidents Day weekend.
Booker is one of several senators running for president or seriously considering it. At 49, he is the youngest among his Senate colleagues in the race. His age is not all that sets him apart: Booker is unmarried and vegan, two unique qualities among the emerging Democratic field.
In his announcement video, Booker also notes that he is "the only senator who goes home to a low-income, inner city community" in Newark, "the first community that took a chance on me."
Cory Anthony Booker is an American politician serving as the junior United States Senator from New Jersey since 2013 and a member of the Democratic Party. The first African-American U.S. Senator from New Jersey, he was previously the 36th Mayor of Newark from 2006 to 2013. Before that Booker served on the Newark City Council for the Central Ward from 1998 to 2002.
Booker was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Harrington Park, New Jersey. He attended Stanford University, where he received an undergraduate and master's degree in 1991 and 1992, respectively. He studied abroad at the University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship before attending Yale Law School. He won an upset victory for a seat on the Municipal Council of Newark in 1998, where he staged a 10-day hunger strike and briefly lived in a tent to draw attention to urban development issues in the city. He ran for mayor in 2002, but lost to incumbent Sharpe James; he ran again in 2006 and won against deputy mayor Ronald Rice. His first term saw to the doubling of affordable housing under development and the reduction of the city budget deficit from $180 million to $73 million. He was re-elected in 2010. He ran against Steve Lonegan in the 2013 U.S. Senate special election and subsequently won reelection in 2014 against Jeff Bell.
As senator, his voting record was measured as the third most liberal.
Considered a social liberal, Booker supports women's rights, affirmative action, same-sex marriage and single-payer healthcare. During his five years in office, Booker co-sponsored and voted for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (2013), tougher sanctions against Iran, sponsored the Bipartisan Budget Act (2013), voted for the National Defense Authorization Act (2014), co-sponsored the Respect for Marriage Act (2014) and lead the push to pass the First Step Act (2018). In 2017, he became the first sitting senator to testify against another when he testified against Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions during his confirmation hearing. In April 2018, following the FBI raid on the offices of Michael Cohen– Trump's personal attorney–Booker together with Chris Coons, Lindsey Graham, and Thom Tillis, introduced the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act to limit the executive powers of Trump.
Booker regularly exercises and has been a vegetarian since 1992, when he was a student at Oxford.
He abstains from alcohol and "has no known vices or addictions" other than coffee.
In 2014, Booker began practicing a vegan diet and has expressed his vegan ethical philosophy and advocacy for animals. As of June 2016, Booker worshiped at the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey.
Booker has never been married, and in 2013 he was named one of Town & Country's "Top 40 Bachelors".
Although he has generally tried to keep his personal life private, Booker has in the past described himself as a "straight male" and has said that he is trying to date more in hopes of finding someone to settle down with. In a 1992 column in The Stanford Daily, Booker admitted that as a teenager he had "hated gays".
Booker has himself been the target of rumors about being gay and has generally refused to address these on principle, which he explained in 2013:
There is a rumor he's dating actress Rosario Dawson.
Though neither of them have acknowledged or confirmed those rumors. Dawson and Booker have been seen together at several public events in the last month; Dawson has yet to acknowledge Booker's presidential run.
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