Cory Booker

Cory Anthony Booker (born April 27, 1969) is an American politician and lawyer serving as the senior United States senator from New Jersey, a seat he has held since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, Booker is the first African-American U.S. senator from New Jersey. 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 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.

Booker was elected to the U.S. Senate in New Jersey's 2013 special election and reelected in 2014 and 2020. He became New Jersey's senior senator when Bob Menendez resigned on August 20, 2024.

Booker became the first senator to ever testify against another senator during attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions's 2017 confirmation hearing. Booker ran for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, and suspended his campaign on January 13, 2020. From March 31 to April 1, 2025, he delivered the longest speech in U.S. Senate history, lasting 25 hours and five minutes, in protest of the second presidency of Donald Trump.