Tag: Cory Booker

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New Jersey: GOP Senate candidate thinks it’s “weird” Cory Booker won’t say if he’s gay

As I wrote here yesterday, Newark Mayor Cory Booker has stated that he isn’t interested in labels about sexuality, and wants to challenge folks on their homophobia.

His Senate opponent, Steve Lonegan, says he thinks it’s “weird” that Booker won’t say if he’s gay or straight. He also alludes to the idea that being “gay” isn’t masculine or something by saying “as a guy, I personally like being a guy.”

Here’s just a bit of what Lonegan had to say to by Newsmax’s Steve Malzberg:

“As a guy, I personally like being a guy,” Lonegan, who is the former New Jersey head for the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, told Newsmax’s Steve Malzberg. “I don’t know if you saw the stories last year, they’ve been out quite a bit, about how he likes to go out at three-o’clock in the morning for a manicure and a pedicure.”

“Maybe that helps him get the gay vote, by acting ambiguous,” he continued. “Although I don’t like going out in the middle of the night, or any time of day, for manicures and pedicures. It was described as his peculiar fetish, is how it was described. I have a more peculiar fetish: I like a good Scotch and a cigar, that’s my fetish. But we’ll just compare the two.”

In the middle of that to bring up “fetishes” like cigars and such, I just got a little lost in where Lonegan was going with all that.

Recent polling shows Booker up 16 points in the special Senate race.

(via Right Wing Watch)

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Newark Mayor Cory Booker – “I want to challenge people on their homophobia”

“I love seeing on Twitter when someone says I’m gay, and I say, ‘So what does it matter if I am? So be it. I hope you are not voting for me because you are making the presumption that I’m straight.’” – New Jersey mayor and US Senatorial candidate Cory Booker in an interview with the Washington Post, saying he wants to challenge people on their homophobia.

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New Jersey: Mayor Cory Booker leads GOP rival by 16 points in Senate race

According to a Monmouth University poll released this morning, Mayor Cory Booker has a 16 point lead against GOP rival Steve Lonegan, the former New Jersey chapter head of the far-right Americans For Prosperity.

Booker currently holds a 54% to 38% advantage over Lonegan among New Jerseyans likely to vote in the October 16 special election. Booker has solid support among Democratic voters (92%), while Lonegan musters support from 79% of his partisan base. Independent voters split, 43% for Booker to 41% for Lonegan. ooker gets more positive ratings from Republicans (27%) than Lonegan gets from Democrats (5%). They receive about the same “net” score from independents: +22 for Booker (49% favorable to 27% unfavorable) and +23 for Lonegan (37% favorable to 14% unfavorable).

Lonegan has all the expected positions: anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant, anti-Obamacare, anti-gun control.

(via JMG)

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New Jersey: Mayor Cory Booker easily wins Democratic primary for US Senate

With 98% of precincts reporting, Mayor Cory Booker easily won the Democratic primary in New Jersey in the special election to fill the US Senate seat of recently deceased Frank Lautenberg.

With 98 percent of the vote counted, Mr. Booker had won nearly 60 percent of the vote, far more than his nearest challenger, Representative Frank Pallone Jr., who had about 20 percent of the vote. Representative Rush D. Holt trailed with about 17 percent and the State Assembly speaker, Sheila Y. Oliver, had less than 5 percent.

Mr. Booker is a heavy favorite to win the October general election in an overwhelmingly Democratic state that has not elected a Republican senator in four decades. If he does he will become the country’s only elected black senator.

In the GOP primary, Steven Lonegan coasted to his own victory with 79% over his one challenger.

Of the over 300,000 votes cast, Booker received more than twice that of Lonegan.

(via NY Times)

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New Jersey: Mayor Cory Booker helps rescue freezing dog

Reporter Toni Yates of WABC-TV was reporting on a story in Newark, NJ when noticed a dog freezing outside in the brutal cold.  Hours later, she passed by and saw the dog again.  This time she took to the Twitter universe and the Mayor saying “Make pet owners get their dogs out of the cold.”

Soon, Mayor Cory Booker was on location taking matters into his own hands:

“This is brutal weather. This dog is shaking really bad and you just can’t leave your dogs out here on a day like this and go away and expect them to be OK,” the mayor told WABC.  “Hypothermia on any animal including a human animal will set in pretty quickly. So this is very sad. You can just feel the dog shaking pretty badly.”

Booker picked up the dog and put it into the back of a police car.

“If you’d crank up that heat, I’d appreciate it,” he told the police officer.

Booker, 43, called the dog’s owner and told them it was unacceptable to leave the dog outside in the freezing weather, WABC reported.

The owners said they were in Queens, N.Y., and did not know that Cha Cha had gotten outside. They said it was an accident and thanked the mayor for saving the dog, a new mother.

Mayor Cory Booker – not a mayor to hope others do the right thing.

Hero, here folks. Hero.

(source)

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Mayor Cory Booker: 1992 Op-Ed chronicles his journey from homophobe to LGBT ally

Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, while attending Stanford University,  wrote an op-ed for the student newspaper back in 1992 which chronicled his evolution from casual homophobe to gay rights ally.

The essay shares his “aha” moment about homosexuality & acceptance, and shows why he’s become one of brightest young stars of the Democratic Party.

Click on the pic above to read. The text of the column is also at the link.

(via JMG)

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Newark Mayor Cory Booker saves woman from fire

Booker arrived home last night to discover his next-door neighbor’s house on fire, and rescued a young woman trapped upstairs by carrying her through the flames, suffering second-degree burns in the process.

The mayor’s security team discovered the fire and pounded on the door to alert residents, when an elderly woman said that her daughter was trapped upstairs. At first Rodriguez would not let Booker into the burning house. “He basically told me, ‘This woman is going to die if we don’t help her,’ and what can I say to that?,” Rodriguez said. “I let him go and without thinking twice, he just ran into the flames and rescued this young lady.”

The mayor said, “Yesterday, all my problems were really big to me. Today things feel a lot more clear,” Booker said. “And I have a lot more respect for firefighters!
(source)

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Newark Mayor Cory Booker opposes a popular vote for equal rights

While NJ Gov. Christie would like to put marriage equality rights to a popular vote, Newark Mayor Cory Booker says leaders are elected to make difficult decisions, not submit to a public referendum.

“I shudder to think what would have happened if the civil rights gains, heroically established by courageous lawmakers in the 1960s, were instead conveniently left up to popular votes in our 50 states,” Booker said in a statement.

“Equal protection under the law – for race, religion, gender or sexual orientation – should not be subject to the most popular sentiments of the day,” Booker said. “Marriage equality is not a choice. It is a legal right. I hope our leaders in Trenton will affirm and defend it.”