Researching Cory Booker

Booker was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Harrington Park, New Jersey. 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 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. He ran for mayor in 2002 but lost to incumbent Sharpe James. 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.