Cory Anthony Booker, born on April 27, 1969, in Washington, D.C., was raised in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, by parents Cary Alfred Booker and Carolyn Rose Jordan Booker, who were among the first Black executives at IBM and active in the civil rights movement; his father broke barriers as one of the company's earliest Black salesmen. Booker attended Stanford University on a football scholarship, earned a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University, and obtained his law degree from Yale Law School. After law school, he moved to Newark, New Jersey, where he lived in the Brick Towers housing projects, founded a nonprofit providing legal services to low-income tenants, and served on the Newark Municipal Council for the Central Ward from 1998 to 2002. He gained national prominence after a dramatic 2006 mayoral election victory over four-term incumbent Sharpe James, whom he accused of corruption. As Mayor of Newark (2006–2013), he focused on revitalizing the city through economic development, crime reduction, and education initiatives. In 2013, he won a special election to the U.S. Senate following the death of Frank Lautenberg, becoming New Jersey's first African-American senator and serving as a prominent Democratic leader known for his advocacy on civil rights, criminal justice reform, and urban policy. He launched a presidential campaign in 2019 but suspended it after poor performance in early primaries. In 2025, Booker set a record for the longest Senate speech, speaking for over 25 hours against a Republican budget bill.