Sen. Cory BookerCertified

Election Legitimacy (28/30)

There is no record in available reporting of Cory Booker ever disputing a legitimate U.S. election outcome without evidence. Notably, when Booker lost his own bid for the presidency, he accepted the result gracefully rather than contesting it: after his 2020 Democratic primary campaign stalled, he suspended his campaign on January 13, 2020, later endorsing former Vice President Joe Biden, who went on to win the Democratic nomination and the general election . This is direct evidence of a politician accepting a contest he personally lost, which the rubric treats as a strong positive signal. Broader reporting on the certifications of the 2020 and 2024 elections shows these proceedings occurring within the normal, lawful constitutional process, and Booker — unlike a faction of his colleagues in the other chamber and party — has not appeared in any search results questioning the validity of any of these outcomes. Because I could not locate a specific, directly-quotable statement from Booker on his individual January 6, 2021 certification vote, the score is not a full 30, but the absence of any election-denial rhetoric combined with his gracious concession of his own primary loss supports a very high score.

Voting Rights (24/25)

Booker’s Senate record on ballot access and voting-rights enforcement is extensive and consistent over more than a decade. He has been a lead or original sponsor of multiple major voting-rights bills: in addition to cosponsoring the VoteSafe Act, the Natural Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act, the For the People Act, the Voting Rights Advancement Act, and the Democracy for all Amendment, he was the lead sponsor of the Anti-Voter Suppression Act , introduced amid COVID-19 to expand ballot access. He has repeatedly cosponsored and helped reintroduce the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, most recently alongside U.S. Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Reverend Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Laphonza Butler (D-CA), along with Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee , aimed at restoring protections gutted by Shelby County v. Holder. His involvement dates back at least to 2015, when Sen. Booker cosponsored the Voting Rights Advancement Act (VRAA) of 2015, which seeks to restore and advance voting protections for all Americans . On the anniversary of the original Voting Rights Act, he stated he was troubled by continued efforts to roll back provisions of the Voting Rights Act, which still has a central role to play in protecting vital American civil rights . This is a deep, sustained legislative record, justifying a near-maximum score.

Checks and Balances (23/25)

Booker has repeatedly used legislative and oversight tools to constrain executive power and defend judicial and law-enforcement independence, in some cases working with Republicans. In 2017, amid concerns about the Mueller investigation, Booker joined Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to introduce the bipartisan Graham-Booker Special Counsel Independence Protection Act (SCIPA), legislation that would create a judicial check on the executive branch’s ability to remove a special counsel . He warned that it is of urgent importance that Congress act swiftly and in a bipartisan way to protect the special counsel and his investigation from interference by the President , and later said for months, President Trump, his surrogates, and many of his allies in Congress have worked in plain sight to undermine the credibility of the special counsel and his investigation , adding that new revelations showed the president attempted to fire the special counsel last summer . A successor bill, the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act, advanced through committee with Booker as a lead sponsor alongside Graham, Coons and Tillis, and Booker said the vote sends an unmistakable bipartisan message that the President must not interfere with the special counsel’s investigation , calling it a common-sense check on Executive authority . More recently, Booker publicly defended a House colleague’s oversight authority against what he called a politically motivated prosecution, stating that the Department of Justice is wasting resources pursuing these unfounded charges against Representative LaMonica McIver and that she was exercising her authority as a member of Congress to conduct constitutional oversight of a detention center that receives millions of taxpayer dollars . He has also pressed for transparency from the House Ethics Committee regarding a cabinet nominee, joining colleagues to argue that we cannot allow this critical information from a bipartisan investigation into longstanding public allegations to be hidden from the American people . Separately, he has clashed publicly with Republican colleagues over judicial checks on presidential power, as seen in a heated exchange at a hearing on the judicial branch’s check on executive power amid several federal judges’ rulings halting President Trump’s executive orders . This is a strong, active record on separation-of-powers issues, just short of a perfect score given the mixed record of success in actually passing these bipartisan checks into law.

Conduct in Office (20/20)

No nonpartisan body — Senate Ethics Committee, GAO, or Inspector General — has issued adverse findings against Booker. The one formal ethics complaint that reached a resolution actually cleared him: after the conservative group Judicial Watch complained that Booker had violated Senate rules by publicly releasing “committee confidential” Kavanaugh documents during the 2018 Supreme Court confirmation hearings, the Senate Ethics Committee has dismissed calls from the group Judicial Watch for the committee to review whether Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) had broken Senate rules by releasing confidential emails , with the Committee stating it carefully evaluated the allegations in the complaint and, based on all the information before it, determined that no further action is appropriate . A separate complaint filed in April 2025 by the watchdog group FACT alleged that Booker improperly linked a 25-hour Senate floor speech to campaign fundraising appeals; as of the available reporting this is only a filed complaint, with no Ethics Committee finding or sanction, so per the rubric’s rule against penalizing unresolved allegations, it does not affect the score. With no adjudicated findings of wrongdoing from any nonpartisan body, Booker receives full marks in this category.

Bipartisan Cooperation (9/10)

Booker’s most notable legislative legacy involves sustained, substantive bipartisan work, particularly on criminal justice reform. He was a key architect of the landmark First Step Act, described as a bipartisan bill that, for the first time in decades, makes meaningful reforms to our criminal justice system and begins to reverse the injustices of mass incarceration , work later credited to U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the lead sponsors of the landmark First Step Act (FSA) , with Booker among its principal negotiators. He also co-led the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act with a broad bipartisan coalition including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and senators Mike Lee (R-Utah), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) . His democracy-adjacent bipartisan work extends to the Graham-Booker Special Counsel Independence bills discussed above. This consistent, multi-year record of building genuine bipartisan coalitions on rule-of-law and justice-system legislation merits a near-maximum bonus score.