Newark Mayor Booker Announces Run For Open New Jersey Senate Seat

[Purveyor]

Source: REUTERS

NEWARK, New Jersey (Reuters) – Newark Mayor Cory Booker announced his candidacy on Saturday for a U.S. Senate seat for New Jersey and will run in a Democratic primary set for August to fill the seat of the late Senator Frank Lautenberg.

“I do not run from challenges. I run towards them,” Booker said at a news conference in the city where he has served as mayor since 2006.

After Lautenberg’s death on Monday, Republican Governor Chris Christie called a special election to fill the remainder of the late senator’s term.

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/08/newark-mayor-booker-announces-run-for-open-new-jersey-senate-seat/

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Yeah!

[DWinNJ]

1. I guess running into that fire

was his setup for “I do not run from challenges. I run towards them,”

[freshwest]

2. He's good at uniting to work on common problems. He was strong at the DNC:

I don't agree with all that he says or does, but he's not going to be shouted down in the Senate, he's going to be very effective.

[Cha]

3. Thanks for that, fresh!

I wonder how Booker feels about having the Senate Election in October?

[freshwest]

6. The sooner, the better. Our current MA residents will know. (dial-up warning, large picture)

From Mother Jones:

...Meanwhile, another politician is mastering earned media (yes, same thing, but bear with us). Cory Booker, a Rhodes Scholar and Stanford football star, first gained notoriety when he moved into Newark's notorious Brick Towers after becoming a city council member. Then, in 2002, he tried to oust Sharpe James from his 16-year perch as mayor. Booker, derided as a carpetbagger and "not black enough" by James and his supporters, lost that race, but an Oscar-nominated documentary, Street Fight, brought him wider attention and guaranteed a rematch with the James machine. Still living in Brick Towers, he became mayor in 2006 and quickly lowered the homicide rate by an astonishing 36 percent, and doubled the number of affordable housing units, all while slashing the deficit and raising the salaries of many city workers.

This is remarkable stuff. But what propels Booker into the once-in-a-generation stratum of leaders is how he has enlisted his constituents to fight for a better city—and how he has used social media to do so.

Booker keeps up an awe-inspiring Twitter feed. He fields -and acts upon- complaints about broken streetlights and fire hydrants. He quotes philosophy and Scripture. He reminds Newarkians how to report landlords who don't turn on the heat. When Jersey Shore "star" Snooki tweeted "Ugh stuck in Nwk traffic is no fun," he replied, "Snooki! I'm the mayor where R U so I can give u a ticket 4 texting & driving we needs revenue!" He's also got the city—and followers from around the world—joining his weight-loss efforts via the #letsmove hashtag.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/cory-booker-twitter-sarah-palin

He sounds like what we need in the Senate. Open-minded, not afraid to do things differently while keeping to principles. It's the big picture he's into and making everyone's lives better. A little bit more from him about his life and sense of humor:

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/june/transcript-cory-booker-061912.html?view=print

I also liked this I found:

Don't speak to me about your religion by Corey Booker

Don't speak to me about your religion;
first show it to me in how you treat other people.

Don't tell me how much you love your God;
show me in how much you love all God's children.

Don't preach to me your passion for your faith;
teach me through your compassion for your neighbors.

In the end, I'm not as interested in what you have to tell or sell as I am in how you choose to live and give.

~ Corey Booker

I feel like I've got a grasp on this man now, and I'm impressed at what I'm reading and hearing. I hope that New Jersey will feel the same way and give him a chance to be their Senator.

[woolldog]

8. I have mixed feelings about him running

for Senate. Individual senators don't get that much done.

I'd much rather see him as governor and then a future presidential candidate.

[freshwest]

9. I think running for governor won't work. It appears Christie will win again.

I have mixed feelings about some of his approaches to things, but remember this is not the country it was when I was his age, not the seventies when government was expanding to meet public needs and when regulation and federal power were respected more.

I think he could become a powerful advocate for America as it is now, while keeping to what is most important. He seems constant on consumer rights, education and fair business. That is so anthetical to the current range of RWNJs he will have to contend with, that he will grow in experience, and he has the staying power to get what is needed to be done.

I look forward to his being in the Senate for a long time. The path to being POTUS often follows from the governor's mansion, as you say. But Obama and JFK did not follow that path. I think he will be a great addition to several caucuses.

I think his experience has given him the sensitivity to reach out. I was struck by his statement of being freed by education. This is true for all of us and the world knows this. For Americans to compete in a global economy, which we have always had in one way or another, requires we go forward with education to uplifti all of us to have healthier, freer lives through that.

[MADem]

4. I agree with that entirely.

He'd also make the Senate start to look just a little bit more like America (long way to go there, yet, but every step helps).

[freshwest]

5. It's about time! We are living in the Second Reconstruction...

Let America be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.&quot

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

~ Langston Hughes

[MADem]

7. +1!!! nt