Cory Booker: More Obama than Obama?

In last night’s New Jersey Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton won 60 percent of the white vote and 60 percent of the Latino vote. “That, readers, looks like a racially divided electorate, regardless of what the campaigns tell you,” said Katharine Q. Seelye of the New York Times. (Clinton won New Jersey 54 percent to Barack Obama’s 44 percent).

Obama nabbed 90 percent of the black vote and a lot of that had to do with the very vocal support of Cory Booker, the charismatic young mayor of Newark, NJ, the state’s largest city. To say Cory Booker is in the Obama mold — a young, reform-minded, postracial* idealist — might be a selling him a little short. Booker’s resume might actually be more impressive.

Booker is the subject of an amazing profile in this week’s New Yorker (sorry, you gotta go buy it) and he’s straight out of central casting. His C.V.: Son of civil rights activists and some of the first black executives at IBM. Stanford undergrad, and while there became a youth organizer , crisis hotline volunteer, Academic All-American tight end on football team; B.A. in political science, M.A. in sociology a year later. Rhodes Sholar. Oxford (graduated with honors), and while there, joined L’Chaim, a group that aimed to ease tensions between blacks and Jews; became fluent in Hebrew. Yale Law, and while there joined the Big Brother program. and started free legal clinics for poor people in New Haven.

Seriously, y’all: you can’t write this stuff.

With a resume like that (and who the hell has a resume like that?), Booker could have done anything. Anything. But he wanted to move to Newark to volunteer. So he did. But he didn’t just move to Newark — he moved into the projects. He ran for a council seat, going door to door with friends and family and introducing himself to Newark residents. Newarkers viewed him as an outsider who spoke funny, but he slowly won them over.

He would eventually run for mayor against an entrenched and incompetent local political machine headed by Clarence Royce Sharpe James, who was as popular as he was shady. James deftly played Newark’s peculiar racial politics. He said Booker was Jewish. He said Booker was white. (Booker is neither.) At one point their nasty, heated contest became a literal street fight. Booker lost. The second time, James inexplicably and suddenly dropped out of the race. Booker won overwhelmingly.

Cory Booker — still not 40 years old — is tirelessly, maybe exasperatingly, optimistic. Even as mayor, he’s become a mentor to three at-risk boys. He and his security detail chased down a suspect outside of City Hall. Some of his decisions seem more the work of an activist than a politician. He’s turned down job offers from Trenton and Washington, much better launching pads for an ambitious politician. He’s banking his considerable political future on the fortunes of a struggling city which still views him warily. A lot of people saw his move to the projects as political grandstanding. And many Newarkers still don’t see him as authentically black.

But damn. What an upside.

*Problematic. Yes, we know.