Voters gave New Jersey’s first African American senator Cory Booker six more years to find bipartisan support for solutions to America’s problems. Booker, who was reelected over Republican and staunch conservative Jeff Bell, had raised nearly $4 million in campaign funds and touted bills he cosponsored with conservative senators.
“I’m looking forward in politics to being someone who represents the best of New Jersey values, the best of our nation’s values,†Booker, surrounded by members of his family, told cheering supporters in Newark in his victory speech Tuesday night. “We need to define ourselves not by how well we tear down each other, but by how well we build up America. That is our goal.â€
Booker, 45, was only the ninth African American to head to the upper House of the United States Congress in 224 years after last year’s special election, when he became one of 535 members of the 113th Congress which has been locked in partisan warfare and political gridlock, making it the least productive and most polarized legislative branch in American history.
Booker will be joined by Sen. Tim Scott. South Carolina voters elected the first African-American candidate to a statewide seat since the Civil War and Reconstruction. The win also makes him the first ever African American to serve in both the House and Senate.
RELATED: Junior Senator Cory Booker Faces Off With Most Polarized Congress In American History
On Tuesday night, the Republicans won control of the Senate in the US mid-term elections, increasing their power in the final two years of Barack Obama’s presidency. The Republicans also increased their grip on the House of Representatives and now control both chambers of Congress for the first time since 2006.
Congress has been deeply divided on issues such as health care and the economy that produced gridlock over the past four years. Booker issued a call for unity and pledged to work with Republicans across the aisle. “We need to define ourselves, not by how well we tear each other down, but by how well we build up America,” Booker said last night.
Booker is a senator with national celebrity status. He w
as called America’s superhero for dashing into a neighbor’s burning home in 2012, emerging with a woman who had been trapped in a back bedroom. He breaks bread with wealthy friends such as Oprah Winfrey, who dubbed him a “rock star,†and Ivanka Trump, daughter of Republican real estate mogul Donald Trump, who both hosted fundraisers for his Senate campaign in 2013.Now Booker plans to use some of the media celebrity that helped make him a national figure and to focus on areas where agreement can be reached, For the past year, Booker had adopted a low profile media strategy since winning the special election to fill the remainder of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s term. According to The Record, he reportedly turned down network appearances and shunned the Capitol Hill press as he learned Senate procedure and built relationships with colleagues.
Booker is progressive on social issues that have divided Congress. He supports women’s rights, same-sex marriage, immigration reform, and gun control. He
favors a higher minimum wage, corporate tax reform, and greater college financial assistance. He also wants to spur job creation through infrastructure spending and increased manufacturing in the USA. And a major concern is criminal justice reform.“There has been this emphasis on punishment and not rehabilitation,†Booker told BlackEnterprise.com. “America has become an incarceration nation. “I don’t think many people realize how much money we waste, how large our prison population is, largest in the world, a quarter of the world’s imprisoned people,†he added.
The pillars of a lot of Booker’s recommendations are around crime prevention, alternative courts for veterans and youth, drug treatment, and education. What’s unknown is whether Congress will focus on polarizing the President and to pursue initiatives that have led to gridlock in the past.