Sen. Cory Booker, 49, announced on Friday that he will run for president, making a video statement that stressed his platform of unity, optimism and of how much can be accomplished through action and courage.
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His timing was significant — today is the first day of Black History Month — and he joins an already-crowded Democratic field in the hopes of becoming the second African-American U.S. president.
“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 said in his announcement.
“It is not a matter of ‘Can we?’ It’s a matter of ‘Do we have the collective will, the American will? I believe we do,” he said. “Together, we will channel our common pain back into our common purpose. Together, America, we will rise.”
Booker’s ambition, experience and track record in public service helped him get attention. He spent more than five years in the Senate and seven years as mayor of Newark, New Jersey, where he gained fame for his youth and hands-on approach in trying to turn around a city plagued by poverty.
Public polling suggests Booker is unknown to many Americans, CNN reported. However, he’s a gifted speaker who has been passionate on issues such as criminal justice. He also made a name for himself interrogating President Donald Trump’s nominees including Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Booker has been reluctant to attack Trump directly, but Trump has targeted him, saying at an October White House event that Booker “ran Newark, New Jersey, into the ground,” CNN reported.
Booker said in his announcement that he’s “the only senator who goes home to a low-income, inner-city community” in Newark. Newark is “the first community that took a chance on me,” he said.
With senators Kamala Harris (D-CA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) already in the race, Booker represents the possibility of a historic first: one of two Black candidates in the 2020 field with a chance to secure the Democratic nomination.
This is “unprecedented in U.S. presidential politics and will be a test for what type of Black politician can best attract Black voters, maybe the most important and loyal portion of the Democratic base,” Terrell Jermaine Starr reported in The Root.
Andrew Gillum, former Florida gubernatorial candidate and now a CNN political commentator, tweeted this week that “The next president will be able to reach some of those Trump voters … who believed that, quite frankly, they were getting a raw deal.”
Booker said he plans to reject donations from corporate political action committees, as did Democratic presidential candidates Gillibrand, Harris, Warren, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, and former Rep. John Delaney, ABC reported.
In an interview with The Root, Booker talked about what he calls “common pain”:
“You work a full-time job in America, and you still live below the poverty line. That’s common pain. That affects people in rural areas, in factory towns, and people in the inner city … We need to have a common purpose to stop that … so that’s the
“I think that’s when we can make tremendous change. That’s when transformative, societal change happens. We’ve seen the Civil Rights Movement, Worker’s Rights Movement, Suffrage Movement … taking a nation that’s gone from sweatshops and child labor to public education and worker empowerment.”
