Who is Cory Booker? Bio, age, family, and key positions

Business Insider

• Two thirds of respondents content with Booker as nominee would also be satisfied with Sen. Kamala Harris as nominee. That satisfaction rate is roughly 15 percentage points higher than Harris’ satisfaction among Democrats overall.
• A majority of those satisfied with Booker would also be satisfied with the nomination of former Rep. Beto O’Rourke or Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Among Booker fans, O’Rourke outperforms his satisfaction rate among Democrats generally by about 8 percentage points, and Warren by over 10 percentage points.

The takeaway is that Booker has considerable overlap with serious contenders, and this could go well — people identify him as a consensus candidate — or it could go disastrously: his potential support is divided among rivals.

INSIDER has been conducting a recurring poll through SurveyMonkey Audience on a national sample to find out how different candidate’s constituencies overlap. We ask people whether they are familiar with a candidate, whether they would be satisfied or unsatisfied with that candidate as nominee, and sometimes we also ask whether they think that person would win or lose in a general election against President Donald Trump.

Read more about how we’re polling this here.

What are Cory Booker’s policy positions?

• On healthcare:
• On immigration:
  • Booker is a staunch proponent of comprehensive immigration reform.
  • He supports the Obama-era “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” (DACA) program, which protects from deportation young undocumented people who came to the US as children.
  • In July 2018, Booker was among a group of Senate Democrats who introduced the Keep Families Together Act, which aimed at keeping immigrant families together and preventing Homeland Security from separating children from their parents at the border.
  • Booker has been a vocal opponent of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, describing them as “abhorrent” and standing in “stark contrast to America’s most fundamental ideals.”
• On climate change:
  • Booker supports the Green New Deal, a radical road map of future legislation to transition the US to 100% clean and renewable energy within a decade, in concert with federal investments in clean-energy jobs.
  • “The hard truth is climate change has imperiled our planet — it’s going to take bold action now to save it including dramatic investment in green energy that will create the jobs of the future. We can do this,” Booker said in February.
• On campaign finance:
• On abortion:
• On LGBTQ rights:
  • Booker has been a vocal supporter of same-sex marriage for years and presided over the state of New Jersey’s first same-sex weddings as mayor of Newark. But he’s also admitted to having evolved on his views toward to LGBTQ community over time.
  • Early on in his career as a senator, Booker co-sponsored the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which barred workplace discrimination because of sexual orientation or gender identity.
  • Booker has been highly critical of Trump’s ban on transgender people from serving in the military. “Mr. President, trans military members have sacrificed far more than you ever have – or will,” Booker said in a July 2017 statement.
• On education:
  • Booker is somewhat of an outlier among Democrats due to his past support for both charter schools and private schools.
  • Booker co-sponsored the Debt Free College Act, which was reintroduced in March, that aims to provide states incentives via matching grants to increase investments in public higher education and provide students with debt-free college. The bill aims to address the student loan crisis, which Booker says “punishes” young people for “seeking an education.”
• On Supreme Court and congressional issues:

• On guns:
  • Booker is a strong proponent of stricter gun laws.
  • Booker is in favor of universal background checks and sponsored the Assault Weapons Ban of 2017, legislation to ban military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.
  • “Gun violence is an epidemic in this country — we have a responsibility to take this seriously and pass legislation that will curb the violence and take care of survivors and their families,” Booker said in a tweet in late March.
• On criminal justice reform:
• On trade:
• On foreign policy:
• On taxes:
  • Booker has not as of yet offered explicit economic plans regarding taxes as part of his 2020 campaign.
  • The senator does have a “baby bonds” plan to address wealth inequality, however, which would annually grant every native-born child in the US a set amount of money.
  • “It would be a dramatic change in our country to have low-income people break out of generational poverty,” Booker said of the “baby bonds” plan in an interview with Vox. “We could rapidly bring security into those families’ lives, and that is really exciting to me.”
  • Booker in April unveiled a proposal to cut taxes for more than 150 million Americans. The “Rise Credit” plan would expand the earned income tax credit, which benefits low and middle-income workers.

What are Cory Booker’s political successes?

How much money has Cory Booker raised?

• Booker’s campaign said it raised $5 million over the course of February and March, and over $6.1 million in cash on hand.
• Booker raised $4.5 million in the second quarter of 2019.

How is Cory Booker viewed by voters compared to the competition?

INSIDER has conducted a number of other polls to check in on how these candidates are perceived in comparison to one another. When we asked respondents to one poll to rank how far to the left or to the right they considered the candidates, Booker was generally considered to be one the third-most left-leaning candidates in the field. Booker was among the more experienced candidates int the field by far when we asked respondents to rank the candidates based on how prepared they are for the rigors of the presidency given what they knew about their history of public service and experience with government. And when asked how likable or personable respondents perceived the candidates to be, Booker was in the top half og candidates.

Could Cory Booker beat President Trump?

Referring back to INSIDER’s recurring poll, Cory Booker overall is believed to be a fairly ordinary candidate in a general election against Donald Trump compared to the whole field. Booker is essentially right on the money when it comes to his perceived perform acne against Trump compared to the general Democratic average.

How do Democratic voters feel about Cory Booker’s qualifications?

INSIDER has conducted polling about how voters feel about candidate attributes or qualifications. We asked respondents about a list of possible qualifications and if they made them more likely or less likely to vote for a candidate for president.

For example, among respondents who said they’d vote in the Democratic primary, 19% said a candidate being a college professor made them likelier to support them, while 4% said it made them less likely to, for a +15% net favorability. We can then see how different candidates’ resumes stack up compared to those preferences.

Attributes perceived as most valuable include his released tax returns (+43%), position in the Senate (+40%), past as an activist (+28%), that he is multi-lingual (+25%), age 50 or younger (+23%), a Rhodes scholar (+12%) with an Ivy league education (+7%) and a lawyer (+3%).

Attributes considered to be a liability based on the preferences of self-reported Democratic voters include that he grew up wealthy (-42%).