In what was billed as the major hometown rally kicking off his campaign, Booker, D-N.J., spoke to a late-arriving crowd of more than 1,000 at Military Park, a revitalized green oasis in a city that was once a symbol of urban despair but has credible claims of an economic and cultural resurgence. Booker combined his familiar themes of unity with specific policies to close the racial wealth gap, repair what he considers a broken criminal justice system and set the country on a path to be a leader in climate change.
“We can’t wait when powerful forces are turning their prejudice into policy and rolling back the rights that generations of Americans fought for and heroes died for,” Booker said. “We can’t wait when this administration is throwing children fleeing violence into cages, banning Muslims from entering the nation founded on religious liberty and preventing brave transgender Americans from serving the country they love.”
The event also marked a kind of apex of Booker’s focus on Newark, a city he mentions more often on the campaign trail than his own name, hoping that the city’s rocky yet resilient rise can help propel him to the top of a crowded Democratic field for the 2020 election.
While Newark, which has a population of 285,000, is clearly in the midst of a revival, it still struggles with crime and poverty. The median household income is roughly $20,000 less than the national average, and more than 28% of the city’s residents live below the poverty line, according to the U.S. census.
And Booker’s tenure in Newark was not without blemishes. The Newark Police Department, plagued by decades of mismanagement and corruption, was investigated by the Department of Justice and placed under a consent decree. The results were mixed for a highly touted $100 million investment in Newark schools by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook. And though homicides reached historic lows early in Booker’s first term, crime began to tick back up just as he was elected to the Senate in 2013, eliciting criticism that he had stopped focusing on the city with his sights set on Washington.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.