Legislative Policy Conference
Speakers
U.S. Senator Cory Booker
Cory Booker believes that the American dream isn't real for anyone unless it's within reach of everyone. Cory has dedicated his life to fighting for those who have been left out, left behind, or left without a voice.
Cory grew up in northern New Jersey and received his undergraduate and master’s degree from Stanford University. At Stanford, Cory played varsity football, volunteered for the campus peer counseling center, and wrote for the student newspaper. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and went on to study at the University of Oxford, and then Yale Law School, where he graduated in 1997.
Cory moved to Newark after law school and started a nonprofit organization to provide legal services for low-income families, helping tenants take on slumlords. In 1998, Cory moved into “Brick Towers” in Newark, which eventually became a housing project. Cory lived there until the housing project was demolished in 2006.
Cory still lives in Newark's Central Ward today, where he sees first-hand many of the challenges he's working to solve in Congress, such as lack of access to affordable health care, environmental injustice, food insecurity, and our broken criminal justice system.
Cory served as Newark mayor from 2006 until 2013. During his tenure, the city experienced economic growth on a scale not seen since the 1960s. In addition, under Cory’s leadership, overall crime declined, affordable housing and green spaces massively expanded, city services were made more efficient, and educational opportunities increased.
In October 2013, Cory won a special election to represent New Jersey in the United States Senate. In November 2014, he was re-elected to a full six-year term.
As New Jersey’s junior Senator, Cory Booker has brought an innovative and consensus-building approach to tackling some of the most difficult problems facing New Jersey and our country. He has emerged as a national leader in the effort to fix our broken criminal justice system and end mass incarceration, helping craft the most sweeping set of criminal justice reforms in a generation, the First Step Act, which became law in December 2018. He has also advocated for economic policy that expands opportunity, increases wages, limits corporate concentration, and cracks down on corporate practices like outsourcing, stock buybacks, and no-poach agreements that firms use to keep wages down. And he has been a leader in the Senate in the fight to protect the Affordable Care Act, while also championing proposals to build upon the law, increase access to care, and lower costs.