Cory Booker, the dashing mayor of Newark, N.J., is good at politics and all that. But his true calling, it seems, is saving things. And he has saved oh so many things! Here are all those things he’s rescued, fixed, or saved.
A Freezing Dog
Already a legend, a superhero, and a meme, Booker thought to himself, “Mayor, how could you be even more infallible in the eyes of your constituents—nay, the eyes of the nation?” The answer was clear: rescue a freezing dog. Booker responded to a tweet Thursday night from a concerned citizen who called authorities to rescue a dog named Cha Cha who was left outside in sub-zero temperatures. “I’ll head up myself & investigate,” Booker responded. And he did, saving the day—and the dog.Sandy Victims With No Power
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Many, many people were without electricity in the New York-New Jersey area in the days following Superstorm Sandy. Booker, who didn’t lose power, had a simple solution for at least some of those people: C’mon over! After one neighbor tweeted him about being without power, he invited her to his house to “relax” and watch DVDs. Later, he tweeted that he was “having lunch delivered for the 12 or so of you hanging at my place.” Consummate host.A Neighbor in a Burning Home
After returning home last April from running the city, Booker discovered his neighbor’s home was on fire. Promptly, he darted into the building, found the woman who was living there, and “just grabbed her and whipped her out of the bed,” he said, as America swooned. He suffered second-degree burns on his hand, but this is Cory Booker and of course that ain’t no thang. “Yesterday all my problems were really big to me,” he said the next day. “Today things feel a lot more clear.”A Pedestrian Hit by a Car
When you need backup, Booker’s there. A Newark citizen was performing emergency triage on a pedestrian who was hit by a car last June when Booker pulled up to the accident scene and immediately jumped in to help the man stabilize the victim. Newark’s own legion of superheroes?A Traffic Light
No job is too small for Mayor Booker. Just days after rescuing his neighbor from a burning building, Booker came through for a crisis of a much smaller scale. He fixed a broken traffic light. Back to business as usual, Newark. Snowed-In Residents
Snowmageddon? Snowpocalypse? Whatever cutesy doomsday you have, it’s no match for Booker. While most of New York City was paralyzed after a post-Christmas blizzard in 2010, Booker sprung into action to help dig Newark out by, well, springing into action to dig Newark out. He had residents of the city tweet him the locations of bad snow pileups, and bounced around helping to shovel and plow the streets and sidewalks himself. Melting snow, and melting hearts.Politicians on Twitter
Politicians who tweet typically relegate their social-media presence to careful messages about policy or pleas for votes in 140 characters or less. In other words, they’re boring. Enter Cory Booker, then, to prove that politicians can take to Twitter with personality and a sense of humor. Offered as proof: this gem, a definite candidate for Tweet of 2012.School Lunches
Booker is not afraid to throw down in the name of policy. He go into a Twitter debate with a user demanding to know why the government is responsible for making sure students get nutritious and subsidized school lunches. “Why is there a family today that is ‘too poor’ to afford breakfast?” the tweeter asked, to which Booker shot back a challenge: “Lets you and I try to live on food stamps in New Jersey (high cost of living) and feed a family for a week or month. U game?” And then, he did.Bipartisanship
Having members of Congress reach across the aisle and compromise this past year has been the definition of the impossible dream. Sent from a dream, then, are Cory Booker and Chris Christie, Newark’s Democratic mayor and New Jersey’s Republican governor, proving that bipartisanship can be a political reality—and a fruitful one, at that.The Future of the Democratic Party
C’mon. This guy is a star.
