Cory Anthony Booker: On a Path That Could Have No Limits

[undergroundrailroad]

http://inside.c-spanarchives.org:8080/cspan/Pictures/Persons/084679/084679-185632-03.jpg

Cory Anthony Booker: On a Path That Could Have No Limits


By DAMIEN CAVE


Democrats compare him to Barack Obama, the charismatic United States senator from Illinois, or Harold Ford Jr., the Tennessee congressman.

Young, black, Ivy League-educated and pragmatic, Cory Anthony Booker is part of an emerging generation of politicians who came up after the major battles of the civil rights movement and say they have outgrown its approach.

But while Mr. Booker, 37, clearly sees himself as a next-generation leader who will fight for ideas and people, not ideology or party, he has chosen a position that has long been the first stop of his elders: big-city mayor.

Unlike Mr. Ford, who was sworn into Congress at the age of 26, Mr. Booker will become a manager — "chief executive of a major city," said Ellis Cose, an author and columnist who often writes about race.

That decision could make or break a career that his friends and supporters said could have no limits.