Presidential candidate Cory Booker to tour Hyperion water treatment plant with LA mayor
PLAYA DEL REY — New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker is scheduled to mark Earth Day by touring the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant in Playa Del Rey Monday with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
The visit is part of Booker’s “Justice for All Tour,” in which the candidate running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination speaks to communities about the injustices they face.
Booker will discuss his plans to address key environmental issues during the Los Angeles visit and ones later this week in South Carolina, an aide said.
Booker is among two candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination scheduled to be in Los Angeles on Monday. Entrepreneur Andrew Yang is set to hold a rally in Pershing Square.
Booker is scheduled to be in Milwaukee Tuesday to lead a roundtable discussion with advocates for gun violence prevention.
Booker campaigned in Nevada Thursday through Saturday. Nevada will be the third state in the nation where voters select delegates to the Democratic National Convention following Iowa and New Hampshire.
Booker announced his candidacy Feb. 1 in a 2-minute, 25-second video sent to supporters.
After recounting how real estate agents would not sell his parents a home in a neighborhood with better schools because they were black, Booker recalled how “a group of white lawyers who had watched the courage of civil rights activists were inspired to help black families in their own community, including mine.”
“They changed the course of my entire life,” said Booker, who will turn 50 on Saturday.
Booker received a football scholarship to Stanford and received bachelor’s and master’s degrees there. He was also a Rhodes Scholar, receiving a master’s degree in U.S. history from The Queen’s College at Oxford University in England. He graduated from Yale Law School in 1997.
Following law school, Booker moved into a public housing project in Newark, New Jersey, “where he teamed up with the other tenants to take on a slumlord accused of intentional neglect of the property and won,” according to biographical information supplied by his campaign.
Booker was elected to the Municipal Council of Newark in 1998, defeating a four-term incumbent. He unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2002, but was elected in 2006, serving until 2013, when he won the special election to fill the Senate seat of the late Frank Lautenberg.
“I believe that we can build a country where no one is forgotten, no one is left behind,” Booker said in the announcement video, “where parents can put food on the table, where there are good paying jobs, with good benefits in every neighborhood, where our criminal justice system keeps us safe, instead of shuffling more children into cages and coffins, where we see the faces of our leaders on television and feel pride, not shame.”
When Booker announced his candidacy, Republican National Committee communications director Michael Ahrens called him “a political opportunist who left Newark ridden with crime and an emblem of poverty.”
“Even the liberal base thinks he’s a disingenuous self-promoter, and his embrace of policies like higher taxes, single-payer health care and government-guaranteed jobs make him totally out of touch with most Americans,” Ahrens said.