Booker, Cory Anthony

Impact on the world

Won a 2013 special election to become the first African American to represent New Jersey in the U.S. Senate, after serving as mayor of Newark, where a 2010 dinner conversation with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg led to a surprise $100 million donation to the city's public schools; he later set a Senate record with a marathon floor speech opposing Trump administration policies.

Life & background

A Stanford football player and Rhodes Scholar who earned his law degree from Yale, Booker first ran for mayor of Newark in 2002 and lost a bitter race against incumbent Sharpe James, whose campaign falsely suggested Booker was secretly Jewish and working with the Ku Klux Klan and was not authentically Black enough to lead the city, an episode chronicled in the Oscar-nominated documentary 'Street Fight.' Booker won the mayor's office in 2006 and, after a 2010 dinner conversation in Idaho, secured a surprise $100 million gift from Mark Zuckerberg for Newark's public schools. He won a 2013 special election to the U.S. Senate following the death of longtime Senator Frank Lautenberg, becoming the first African American to represent New Jersey in that chamber, and won a full term the following year. In the Senate, he gained national attention for his confrontational questioning of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and unsuccessfully ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination; in 2025 he delivered a record-setting marathon Senate floor speech protesting Trump administration policies.

Sources

1. U.S. Senate Historical Office; U.S. Senate official biography (booker.senate.gov); Encyclopædia Britannica; New Jersey Globe (Trailblazer series)