Renan Marra
SAO PAULO, SP (Folhapress)-Democratic Senator Cory Boaker, 55, was bothered by the fact that Strom Thurmond (1902-2003), known for his segregationist policies, was still remembered more than 20 years after his death also made the longest speech in the history of the United States Senate.
First black senator elected by New Jersey, Booker now occupies the top of the list. He broke the record on Tuesday night with a 25-hour speech and five minutes full of criticism of what he calls unconstitutional actions that would be carried out by President Donald Trump.
The feat gave Booker projection. Only on the Tiktok platform, the live speech broadcast received more than 280 million likes, according to his team. It also gave visibility to the flags raised by the Democrats, whose opposition Trump has been pointed out as fragile on most fronts.
In his term, Booker has asked for the union of Americans. The Democrat also tells that it has already been discriminated against. Born in Washington, he moved to New Jersey as a child. His family, he says, then suffered racism while trying to buy a house in a predominantly white neighborhood.
Graduated in Law from Yale University, Booker acted as a lawyer in non -profit organizations, providing legal assistance to poor families. He joined politics in 1998 by winning a chair at the Newark City Council. In 2006, he was elected mayor of the same city and gained prominence due to initiatives on arms control and combating violence.
The race for the city was in the David style against Goliath and was portrayed in Marshall Curry’s documentary “Street Fight” (2005). Booker, still unknown to voters, surpassed the then mayor Sharpe James, 66, who had been in office for 16 years.
But Booker was only known nationally in 2012, when he was still mayor and saved a woman from a burning house. “I just grabbed her and took her out of bed,” he said at the time. The attitude earned her praise even from the popular host Oprah Winfrey, who described him as a popstar politician.
After the death of Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg in 2013, Booker won a special election and won a seat in the house. The following year, he was easily elected to his first full term.
In Congress, he acted to prevent the end of Obamacare, the government’s health care program. In 2018, it helped approve reform that reduced penalties to certain federal crimes. He is currently president of the Democratic Party Strategic Communication Committee.
Sometimes compared to former President Barack Obama, Booker competed for presidential candidacy for the Democratic Party in 2019. On the stage, he asked voters to use “radical love” to overcome Trump’s “hatred”. He also highlighted his bipartisan negotiation skills and waved to the most progressive, defending a reform in the criminal system and the legalization of the cannabis market.
But the candidacy did not take off, and Booker ended up giving up the race, later won by Joe Biden. According to critics, at the time he had no national wingspan, something that now projects by making the longest speech in the history of the Senate.
