Bring Back the Old Cory Booker

As a young councilman in Newark, Cory Booker listened to parents describe how they broke the law by claiming they lived somewhere other than the city to get their kids into good schools. In 2008, then-Mayor Booker, speaking to a Manhattan Institute audience, described these lawbreakers as “heroic parents,” desperate to escape the corruption and failure of the Newark system. Listening to them, Booker decided that he could no longer wait for reform in Newark. Instead, he began championing school choice, even affiliating with a prominent Republican businessman in New Jersey, Peter Denton, to create a political movement for charter schools and vouchers. “Wealthy people seem to have that choice,” Booker said. “We say to the poorest, most vulnerable Americans that they cannot choose.”