Newark’s Cory Booker, one of America’s most tech-savvy mayors, did something decidedly old fashioned Thursday night.
He called his mother.
No stranger to headlines, Booker found himself in a hospital Thursday suffering from smoke inhalation and second degree burns on his hands and arms after rushing into a neighbor’s house and rescuing her from a fire.
“I worry about his safety, as well as for the safety of others," said Carolyn Booker from her Atlanta home. "I am thankful that he is going to be OK. I am thankful that the woman trapped is going to be OK.
“I am a mother, but I know that he is a grown man. Therefore he is going to follow his judgment and do what he thinks is best. Even he said that God was in charge last night. He has strong faith and I am proud that we raised a good Christian young man that puts God first and family second.”
Those were traits instilled in Booker and his brother early on by their parents. Carolyn and Cary Alfred Booker were among the first black executives at IBM and raised their sons in the wealthy enclave of Harrington Park, N.J.
“We instilled in both of our children a passion for service and a passion for justice. It has taken its own form in their lives,” said Carolyn Booker, adding that her older son is developing charter schools in Memphis. “Cory has evolved and he is passionate about seeing that people in the inner-city realize their full potential. He is trying to demonstrate that.”
Booker, 42, would go on to play football at Stanford University, earn a Rhodes Scholarship and get a law degree from Yale Law University. Yet, he is not afraid to get his hands dirty. He has been known to shovel snow off the sidewalk, when residents complain that city service was too slow.
From 1998, when he was first elected to the Newark City Council, until 2006, when he was elected mayor, he lived in a notorious public housing complex in his council district. He only moved into his current apartment in the city’s South Ward after the housing project was slated for demolition. On his first day in office as Newark's mayor, he helped chase and catch a bank robber on foot.
In 2010, with more than a million Twitter followers and nearly 15,000 tweets, a social media monitoring company ranked him as the country's second most social mayor in the country. Atlanta's Kasim Reed ranked 10th.
All of that has placed Booker among a class of young black mayors who have transcended their cities and have become national figures. Think Reed, who has been a White House regular, or Charlotte’s Anthony Foxx, who will take center-stage this fall when his city hosts the Democratic National Convention.
Emory University professor Andra Gillespie said political observers in New Jersey believe Booker is mulling a run for governor or U.S. Senator, with senator being a more likely option.
But Roland Martin, a national political analyst, warned about moving too fast.
“Cory Booker is one of many black mayors who have a bright future, but what I always caution people on is trying to anoint somebody as the next national black hero,” Martin said. “You have had Sharon Pratt Kelly [in Washington, D.C.], Kirk Schmoke [in Baltimore], Ron Kirk [in Dallas]. All good, solid, strong, young African-American mayors, but as you go up the ladder it becomes harder. Let Cory Booker be a great mayor in Newark and let things happen naturally.”
Gillespie said she "wasn't the least bit surprised" when she heard what Booker had done.
"That is Cory at his best," said Gillespie, whose book "The New Black Politician: Cory Booker, Newark and Post-racial America," is due out in May. "There is the Newark perception of Cory and a national perception. This helps burnish his national profile, but Cory has vocal critics in Newark.
"There will be naysayers who will try to find something wrong about this. But at the end of the day, there is a woman resting comfortably in a hospital and not in a morgue."
Although his parents are long-time Atlanta residents, Cory Booker has never lived here. Carolyn Booker moved to Atlanta in 1996, working for Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games. Her husband, Cary Booker soon joined her.
Both are now retired and Cary Booker is dealing with Parkinson’s Disease. Carolyn Booker said her husband is aware of their son’s exploits. The couple will soon move back to the New Jersey area to be closer to the mayor as they age.
Carolyn Booker is mum on her son's future political endeavors.
“We support him in whatever he wants to do,” Carolyn Booker said. “Where it takes him? I don’t know. I do know it is more the work and the need than the title and the job.”
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