Cory Anthony Booker was born on April 27,1969 and is an American politician and attorney who has served as the junior United States senator from New Jersey since 2013.
94 Facts About Cory Booker
2.
Cory Booker 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.
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Cory Booker was born in Washington, DC, and raised in Harrington Park, New Jersey.
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Cory Booker attended Stanford University, receiving a BA in 1991 and a master's degree a year later.
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Cory Booker attended Queen's College, Oxford, on a Rhodes Scholarship before attending Yale Law School.
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Cory Booker 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.
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Cory Booker ran for mayor in 2002 but lost to incumbent Sharpe James.
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Cory Booker ran again in 2006 and defeated Deputy Mayor Ronald Rice.
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Cory Booker was elected to the US Senate in a 2013 special election and reelected in 2014 and in 2020.
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Cory Booker has pushed for economic reforms to address wealth inequality in the US, particularly the racial wealth gap.
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Cory Booker has pursued measures to reform the criminal justice system, combat climate change, and restructure national immigration policy.
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Cory Booker was the first senator to ever testify against another senator during attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions's 2017 confirmation hearing.
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Cory Booker was a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 US presidential election, suspending his campaign on January 13,2020.
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Cory Booker was born in Washington, DC; he grew up in Harrington Park, New Jersey, 20 miles northeast of Newark.
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Cory 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.
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Cory Booker has Sierra Leonean ancestry, which he learned when featured on the PBS television program Finding Your Roots.
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Cory 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.
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Cory Booker graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Arts in political science in 1991 and a master of arts in sociology in 1992.
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Cory Booker was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Queen's College, Oxford, earning a degree in United States history in 1994.
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At Oxford, Cory Booker served as president of the Oxford University L'Chaim Society.
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Cory Booker obtained his Juris Doctor in 1997 from Yale Law School and operated free legal clinics for low-income residents of New Haven, Connecticut.
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At Yale, Cory Booker was a founding member of the Chai Society.
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Cory Booker was a Big Brother with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and active in the National Black Law Students Association.
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In 1998, Cory Booker won an upset victory for a seat on the Municipal Council of Newark, defeating four-term incumbent George Branch.
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Cory Booker proposed council initiatives that affected housing, young people, law and order, and the efficiency and transparency of City Hall, but was regularly outvoted.
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On January 9,2002, Cory Booker announced his campaign for mayor of Newark rather than running for reelection as councilman.
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On February 11,2006, Cory Booker announced that he would run for mayor again.
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Cory Booker's campaign, raising over $6 million, outspent Rice's 25 to 1, for which Rice attacked him.
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Cory Booker, in turn, attacked Rice as a "political crony" of James.
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Heavily favored to win, Booker faced former judge and Essex County prosecutor Clifford J Minor and two minor candidates.
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Cory Booker argued that the state's "pay-to-play" laws had been violated and that the land deals would cost the city more than $15 million in lost revenue.
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Specifically, Cory Booker referenced a parcel at Broad and South Streets that would generate only $87,000 under the proposed land deals yet was valued at $3.7 million under then-current market rates.
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In late June 2006, before Cory Booker took office, New Jersey investigators foiled a plot to assassinate him led by Bloods gang leaders inside four New Jersey state prisons.
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Cory Booker took office as mayor of Newark on July 1,2006.
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In 2010, Cory Booker was among the finalists for the World Mayor prize, ultimately placing seventh; he was an unsuccessful candidate for the 2012 award.
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In March 2010, Cory Booker won a Shorty Award in the government category for having the best microblog.
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In July 2010, Cory Booker attended a dinner at a conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, where he was seated with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
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Cory Booker gained national attention on December 28,2010, when a constituent asked him on Twitter to send someone to her elderly father's house to shovel his driveway because he was about to attempt to do it himself.
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In February 2013, responding to a Twitter post, Cory Booker helped a nervous constituent propose to his girlfriend.
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Cory Booker rescued a dog from freezing temperatures in January 2013 and another dog that had been abandoned in a cage in July 2013.
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Cory Booker attended the meeting to deal with the eventuality of the lack of a quorum or a tie vote, in which state law would allow him to cast a deciding vote.
42.
Cory Booker refused to comment to the media after the vote.
43.
When critics noted that the very name of the SNAP program shows that it is intended to "supplement" an individual's food budget, not be its sole source, Cory Booker replied that his aim was to spark a discussion about the reality that many Americans rely solely on food stamps to survive.
44.
On December 20,2012, Cory Booker announced that he would explore running for the US Senate seat then occupied by Frank Lautenberg in the 2014 election, ending speculation that he would challenge Governor Chris Christie in the 2013 gubernatorial election.
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On January 11,2013, Cory Booker filed papers to form a campaign committee without announcing whether he would run.
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On June 3, Lautenberg died of viral pneumonia; five days later, Cory Booker announced his intention to run for Lautenberg's seat in a 2013 special election.
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Cory Booker announced his candidacy at two events, one in Newark and the other in Willingboro.
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Cory Booker was the first African-American to be elected to the Senate since Barack Obama in 2004.
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Cory Booker is the first African-American US senator from New Jersey.
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In November 2013, Cory Booker co-sponsored and voted for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.
51.
Cory Booker voted for the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014 and the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013.
52.
In February 2014, Cory Booker voted against the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act of 2013.
53.
Cory Booker supported fellow New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez when Menendez faced trial on federal corruption and bribery charges.
54.
On September 5,2018, during the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, Booker questioned Kavanaugh on a series of emails marked "committee confidential" dating to Kavanaugh's time in the office of the White House Counsel during George W Bush's presidency.
55.
Cory Booker said that he was violating Senate rules in releasing the documents, with the penalty including possible expulsion from the Senate; he nonetheless defended his decision, referring to the process of producing documents for the hearing as a "sham" and challenging those who warned him about the consequences to "bring it on".
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Cory Booker described the release as "probably the closest I'll ever have in my life to an 'I am Spartacus' moment", referring to a line in the 1960 film Spartacus.
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Committee chairman Chuck Grassley said the documents had already been cleared for public release the night before, and that Cory Booker was not violating any rules, leading some Republicans to accuse Cory Booker of engaging in "theatrics" and "histrionics".
58.
Cory Booker played a leading role in the push to pass the First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill.
59.
Cory Booker has introduced the Marijuana Justice Act, which would legalize cannabis in the United States on the federal level, defund some law enforcement in jurisdictions that have shown racial bias in marijuana arrests, and increase funding to communities affected by the war on drugs.
60.
Cory Booker announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president in the 2020 election on February 1,2019.
61.
Cory Booker was participating in the certification of the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count on January 6,2021, when Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol.
62.
On February 1,2019, Cory Booker announced his campaign for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2020 presidential election.
63.
On January 13,2020, Cory Booker announced that he was suspending his campaign.
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In March 2020, Cory Booker endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden for president.
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Cory Booker has spoken in favor of creating a federal job guarantee and baby bonds.
66.
Cory Booker played a leading role in the push to pass the First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill.
67.
On foreign policy, Cory Booker supports scaling down US involvement in Afghanistan and opposes intervention in Syria.
68.
Cory Booker has stated that Iran poses a direct threat to American and Israeli security and feels all options should be on the table for dealing with the conflict, but his decision to back the Iran nuclear deal framework damaged his long-term relationship with some Jewish voters and supporters.
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In 2009, after Barack Obama became President of the United States, Cory Booker was offered the leadership of the new White House Office of Urban Affairs.
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Cory Booker turned the offer down, citing a commitment to Newark.
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Cory Booker generated controversy on May 12,2012, when he appeared on Meet The Press as a surrogate for Obama's reelection campaign and made remarks critical of that campaign.
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Cory Booker made follow-up comments clarifying that he believed Obama's attacks on Romney's record at Bain were legitimate but did not retract his point about attacking private equity in general.
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Cory Booker sits on the board of advisers of the political action committee Democrats for Education Reform.
74.
Cory Booker is a member of the board of trustees at Teachers College, Columbia University and was formerly a member of the executive committee at Yale Law School and the board of trustees at Stanford University.
75.
In 2010, Cory Booker received the US Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually by the Jefferson Awards.
76.
In May 2012, Cory Booker received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Bard College and gave the commencement speech.
77.
Cory Booker gave the commencement address to New York Law School graduates on May 13,2011, at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center.
78.
Cory Booker gave the commencement address at the University of Rhode Island in May 2011; he received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.
79.
Cory Booker delivered a commencement address to Stanford University graduates on June 17,2012, at Stanford Stadium.
80.
Cory Booker received an honorary degree at Fairleigh Dickinson's 69th commencement ceremony in May 2012.
81.
In May 2013, Cory Booker gave the commencement address at Washington University in St Louis and received an honorary doctorate of law.
82.
On May 16,2014, Cory Booker gave the commencement speech at Ramapo College of New Jersey at the IZOD Center.
83.
Since 2009, Cory Booker has starred in the documentary series Brick City.
84.
Cory Booker contributed to the 2011 documentary Miss Representation and commented on the representations of women in politics in mass media.
85.
Cory Booker then appeared on O'Brien's show and assured viewers that the feud was over and that he was actually a big fan of O'Brien, who agreed that every time he made a joke about Newark, he would donate $500 to the City of Newark, and made a $50,000 donation to the Newark Now charity, which NBC Universal matched.
86.
In 2016, Cory Booker wrote an autobiography, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good.
87.
Cory Booker regularly exercises and has been a vegetarian since 1992, when he was a student at Oxford University.
88.
In 2014, Cory Booker began practicing a vegan diet and has expressed his vegan ethical philosophy and advocacy for animals.
89.
From 1998 to 2006, Cory Booker lived in Brick Towers, a troubled housing complex in Newark's Central Ward.
90.
Since 2013, Cory Booker has lived in a townhouse he owns in the Lincoln Park section of Newark's Central Ward, known as "the Coast" for its arts, jazz, and nightlife history.
91.
Cory Booker speaks Spanish; he attended a Spanish immersion program in Ecuador.
92.
In 2020, Cory Booker learned that he and entertainer RuPaul are cousins, after both appeared on the TV show Finding Your Roots.
93.
In November 2022, Cory Booker wrote a letter of support and leniency for Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes to the federal judge before her sentencing hearing.
94.
Cory Booker has been romantically linked to poet Cleo Wade.