Cory Booker

Cory Anthony Booker (born April 27, 1969) is an American politician who has served as the junior United States senator from New Jersey since 2013.

A member of the Democratic Party, Booker is the first African-American U.S. senator from New Jersey.

Booker graduated from Northern Valley Regional High School at Old Tappan, where he played varsity football and was named to the 1986 USA Today All-USA high school football team.

He attended Stanford University, receiving a BA in 1991 and a master's degree a year later.

He attended Queen's College, Oxford, on a Rhodes Scholarship before attending Yale Law School.

He graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Arts in political science in 1991 and a Master of Arts in sociology in 1992.

He played football for Stanford at tight end and was teammates with Brad Muster and Ed McCaffrey, making the All-Pacific-10 Academic team.

He was elected senior class president.

In addition, Booker ran The Bridge Peer Counseling Center, a student-run crisis hotline, and organized help from Stanford students for youth in East Palo Alto, California.

Booker was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at The Queen's College, Oxford, earning a degree in United States history in 1994.

At Oxford, Booker served as president of the Oxford University L'Chaim Society.

He obtained his Juris Doctor in 1997 from Yale Law School and operated free legal clinics for low-income residents of New Haven, Connecticut.

At Yale, Booker was a founding member of the Chai Society (now Shabtai).

He also was a Big Brother with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and active in the National Black Law Students Association.

Contemplating advocacy work and a run for city council in Newark after graduating from law school, Booker lived in the city during his final year at Yale.

After graduation, he served as staff attorney for the Urban Justice Center in New York and program coordinator of the Newark Youth Project.

He won an upset victory for a seat on the Municipal Council of Newark in 1998, staging a 10-day hunger strike and briefly living in a tent to draw attention to urban development issues in the city.

In 1998, Booker won an upset victory for a seat on the Municipal Council of Newark, defeating four-term incumbent George Branch.

To draw attention to the problems of open-air drug dealing and associated violence, he went on a 10-day hunger strike, living in a tent and later in a motor home near drug-dealing areas of the city.

Booker also proposed council initiatives that affected housing, young people, law and order, and the efficiency and transparency of City Hall, but was regularly outvoted.

He ran for mayor in 2002 but lost to incumbent Sharpe James.

On January 9, 2002, Booker announced his campaign for mayor of Newark rather than running for reelection as councilman.

That pitted him against longtime incumbent Sharpe James.

James, who had easily won election four consecutive times, saw Booker as a real threat and responded with mudslinging.

He was the 38th mayor of Newark from 2006 to 2013, and served on the Municipal Council of Newark for the Central Ward from 1998 to 2002.

Booker was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Harrington Park, New Jersey.

He ran again in 2006 and defeated Deputy Mayor Ronald Rice.

Booker's first term saw the doubling of affordable housing under development and the reduction of the city budget deficit from $180 million to $73 million.

He was reelected in 2010.

He was elected to the U.S. Senate in a 2013 special election and reelected in 2014 and in 2020.

Throughout his Senate tenure, Booker has written, sponsored, and passed legislation advancing women's rights, affirmative action, same-sex marriage, and single-payer healthcare.

He has pushed for economic reforms to address wealth inequality in the U.S., particularly the racial wealth gap.

Booker has pursued measures to reform the criminal justice system, combat climate change, and restructure national immigration policy.

In foreign policy, he has voted successfully for tougher sanctions against Iran, voiced support for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, and lobbied for increased diplomacy in the Middle East.

He was the first senator to ever testify against another senator during attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions's 2017 confirmation hearing.

Booker was a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, suspending his campaign on January 13, 2020.

Booker was born in Washington, D.C.; he grew up in Harrington Park, New Jersey, 20 mi northeast of Newark.

His parents, Carolyn Rose (née Jordan) and Cary Alfred Booker, were among the first black IBM executives.

Booker has said that he was raised in a religious household and that he and his family attended a small African Methodist Episcopal Church in New Jersey.

Booker has Sierra Leonean ancestry, which he learned when featured on the PBS television program Finding Your Roots.