Cory Booker's Battle for Newark

A great article about Cory, the enormous challenges he faces, and the equally enormous integrity, smarts, energy and determination he brings to the task!  I've seen and/or had dinner with Cory four times in the past six weeks and, while I've always thought this, I'm even more convinced that he ROCKS -- the greatest mayor in America, bar none.

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Cory Booker’s Battle for Newark

A bold reformer takes on entrenched crime and corruption.

Steven Malanga

City Journal, Spring 2007

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_2_cory_booker.html

 

Some politicians shape their election strategies on the campaign trail. Others develop them while poring over poll numbers or plotting with advisors. Cory Booker found his on the streets of Newark. One day in 2004, as Booker strolled near his apartment building with his father, the pair heard shots ring out, and then watched chaos erupt as a pack of teens ran past. Booker rushed toward the source of the gunshots and saw a young man staggering toward him. “I caught him in my hands and saw that his chest, his white T-shirt, was filling with deep rich red blood,” Booker remembers. Though Booker urged the boy to “hold tight” and “stay with me,” 19-year-old Wazn Miller died in his arms, gunned down in broad daylight by a hooded assassin.