On the morning of Feb. 12, about 40 Manhattan lawyers, investment
bankers and money managers buzzed with anticipation as they gathered in a
conference room on the 37th floor of the Condé Nast Building. These powerful
and well-connected New Yorkers were there to hear an unlikely guest speaker: a
young City Councilman from Newark, N.J., who gained national notice several
years ago when he spent 10 days camped in a tent in one of Newark’s most violent
housing projects-and lived to tell the tale.
Cory Booker, an earnest 32-year-old with a golden résumé, is
challenging incumbent Newark Mayor Sharpe James’ attempt to win a fifth term in
May, and his campaign has become a cause
célèbre among Manhattan’s business and social elite. Mr. Booker’s good
looks, formidable energy and stellar career as a legitimate student athlete-he
was a tight end at Stanford University and
a Rhodes Scholar-have won him the attention of wealthy Manhattanites whose
knowledge of Newark has until now consisted of what they glimpsed through the
tinted windows of town cars speeding towards Newark International Airport.
Mr. Booker is pleased to have the support of powerful and wealthy
patrons on this side of the Hudson River. “There are two types of money:
There’s love money, and there’s money from people who are interested in getting
something from you,” he said in an interview with The Observer . “Unlike so many politicians I know in New Jersey, the
people who are supporting me are doing it because they believe in me and they
want what’s best for Newark. It’s love money.”
Mr. Booker already has raised $1.5 million-all of it love money,
naturally-and senior campaign aides say he hopes to raise another $1.5 million
in time for Election Day.
Mr. Booker’s appeal was on full display during the breakfast
reception for him in the Condé Nast building. He leaned his tall frame against
a wall and gazed intensely at his audience, which included top supporters like
Andrew Tisch, the president of Loews Corporation, and a handful of partners at
the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom, which was hosting the
event. As the bankers and investment gurus sipped coffee and tea, Mr. Booker
entertained them with tales from the streets of his district-Newark’s central
ward, which was the epicenter of the infamous 1967 riots and remains one of the
city’s toughest neighborhoods.
“I was out canvassing, and I knocked on a woman’s door and I
asked her to step outside,” Mr. Booker told the hushed audience. “I gestured
towards her street and I asked her, ‘Tell me if your street has gotten better
while Sharpe James has been in office.’ Just as I said that, a stolen car came
barreling down the street at breakneck speed.”
Mr. Booker paused a beat, then added: “She shook my hand and
said, ‘You’ve got my vote.'” The bankers and lawyers let out a relieved
chuckle.
Mr. Booker has attracted a range of seemingly unlikely supporters
in Manhattan. Among them are Roger Aron, the chairman of Skadden, Arps, who has
held two fund-raising breakfasts for him; the wealthy investor Leonard Harlan,
who is a key donor to Mr. Booker; Herbert Allen III, the son of the founder of
Allen and Company; and Mark Gerson, a well-known Manhattan investor whose
brother, Rick Gerson, helped Mr. Booker buy a mobile home when he decided to
spend the summer of 2001 living on the streets of his district. (Having already
experimented with a tent the year before, he apparently decided to upgrade to a
camper.)
Many of these rich backers are comfortable with Mr. Booker, who
grew up in an affluent suburb in Bergen County and shares their Ivy League
pedigree. They like to point out that he took a far more virtuous course in
life than they did. Rather than go straight into a lucrative career after
graduating from Yale Law School in 1997, he moved into one of Newark’s bleakest
housing projects and won a City Council seat in the neighborhood.
“Here’s a guy who can write his own ticket for whatever career he
chooses,” Mr. Tisch said in an interview with The Observer . “He has chosen politics. He has chosen Newark. He’s
genuine, he’s plain-spoken, he’s action-oriented. He’s a real activist
politician.”
Mr. Tisch wrote a fund-raising letter on Mr. Booker’s behalf in
which he described the Councilman as “the most exciting individual we have met
in politics in 30 years.”
“I love Cory,” said socialite Beth Rudin DeWoody, the daughter of
the late developer Lew Rudin. “I come from, you know, the 1960’s antiwar
movement. He’s a real activist. He’s a smart guy who could have been making
millions.”
Mr. Booker’s candidacy has a storybook quality, pitting a young
reformer against an aging, entrenched incumbent. In addition to being young,
energetic and smart, Mr. Booker is politically eclectic: He’s a liberal
Democrat who supports school vouchers for poor children, a position that has
won him the support of some board members at the free-market Manhattan
Institute.
“He’s kind of a new-wave mayoral candidate,” said Fred Siegel, a
senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute. “He’s a New Democrat, a
reformer. He’s enormously appealing-intelligent and gutsy.”
Of course, not every powerful Manhattanite supporting Mr. Booker
is tremendously interested in the details of Newark politics. Having a friend
across the Hudson can’t hurt, after all-especially if that friend is young and
considered a future political star.
“When you see top law firms line up like this, they’re not doing
it because the candidate is the answer to the United Way,” said one top
Democratic fund-raiser in New York City. “It’s a business investment-the city
of Newark has enormous need for counsel and for developers.”
A Manhattan Star
Mr. Booker has managed to win the help of a surprising range of
New Yorkers. Mr. Allen, the director of Allen and Company, has raised thousands
of dollars for Mr. Booker and is scheduled to tour Newark with him. Not long
ago, Mr. Harlan-who grew up in Newark-heard of credible threats against Mr.
Booker’s life. He sent one of his company’s security advisers, a former Mossad
agent, to shadow the young politician for a couple of days.
Bill Ackman, a founding partner of Gotham Partners, a Manhattan
investment firm, recalled meeting Mr. Booker at a breakfast arranged by a
mutual friend.
“I spent an hour with the guy,” Mr. Ackman recalled. “I heard
what he had to say, and I asked him, ‘What’s the maximum contribution I can
legally make?’ He told me. Then I got my checkbook out and wrote a
check-$15,400. It’s the biggest check I’ve ever written to a politician. And
I’m not giving to any other politicians until Cory runs for office again.”
Mr. Ackman subsequently threw a fund-raiser for Mr. Booker at his
apartment on Central Park West. At the affair, which was attended by a
half-dozen retired partners from Goldman, Sachs and a few dozen other wealthy
New Yorkers, Mr. Booker painted a dire picture of life in Newark and shared
more scenes from the streets, including one in which his life was threatened by
a drug dealer named T-Bone.
After Mr. Booker’s presentation, audience members reached eagerly
for their checkbooks. “What was really unusual was that people were supporting
a politician entirely for the right reasons,” Mr. Ackman observed.
The Newark race is also giving some national political players an
opportunity to settle some old scores. For instance, former Senator and onetime
Democratic Presidential candidate Bill Bradley, a longtime mentor of Mr. Booker
who now works at a Manhattan investment firm, is aggressively backing his
candidacy, headlining an upcoming fund-raiser for him in Washington, D.C., with
former Congressman and Housing Secretary Jack Kemp, a Republican. While Mr.
Bradley has nurtured Mr. Booker for years, he also has another motive: It’s a
chance to get back at Mr. James, who strongly supported Al Gore in the New Jersey
Presidential primary of 2000.
Mr. Booker’s reliance on Manhattan support comes with substantial
political risks. Mr. James, a wily political operative, has often portrayed
himself as far more streetwise than his opponents, often to great effect. But
Mr. Booker already is quite familiar with hardball tactics. According to Time magazine, Mr. Booker’s opponents
over the years have played the racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic cards in an
attempt to derail him: They’ve whispered that he is actually white, gay, a
stooge of the Ku Klux Klan and a mansion-dwelling lover of Jews.
Mr. Booker doesn’t seem overly worried about such tactics.
“Sharpe James will try to make [Manhattan support] a political vulnerability,
but we will turn it back on him,” he said. “Sharpe’s money is coming from
outside Newark, and from people who do business with the city. My money is
coming from people who have no financial interest in the city at all.”
