As Booker stood for hour after hour, he appeared to have nothing more than a couple of glasses of water to sustain him. Yet his voice grew strong with emotion as his speech stretched into the afternoon (Wednesday morning AEDT), and House members from the Congressional Black Caucus, including House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, stood on the edge of the Senate floor to support him.
“This is a very powerful and principled moment led” by Booker, Jeffries said.
For his part, Booker called on his Democratic colleagues to look to their core values to find the resolve to counter the Republican president.
“Moments like this require us to be more creative or more imaginative, or just more persistent and dogged and determined,” Booker said.
Booker’s cousin and brother, as well as Democratic aides, watched from the chamber’s gallery. Senator Chris Murphy accompanied Booker on the Senate floor throughout the day and night. Murphy was returning the comradeship that Booker had given to him in 2016 when the Connecticut Democrat held the floor for almost 15 hours to argue for gun control legislation.
His Senate floor speech isn’t the longest, but it’s close
The record for the longest individual speech belongs to Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957, according to the Senate’s records. As it rolled past 22 hours, Booker’s speech marked the fourth longest in Senate history.
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“I don’t have that much gas in the tank,” Booker said, yet anticipation in the Capitol was growing that he could surpass the record held by Thurmond.
Booker already surpassed the longest speech time for a sitting senator – the 21 hours and 19 minutes that senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, had held the floor to contest the Affordable Care Act in 2013. Responding to his record being broken, Cruz posted a meme of Homer Simpson crying on social media.
Throughout his determined performance, Booker repeatedly invoked the civil rights leader John Lewis of Georgia, arguing that overcoming opponents like Thurmond would require more than just talking.
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“You think we got civil rights one day because Strom Thurmond – after filibustering for 24 hours – you think we got civil rights because he came to the floor one day and said, ‘I’ve seen the light,’” Booker said. “No, we got civil rights because people marched for it, sweat for it and John Lewis bled for it.”
Booker’s speech was not a filibuster, which is a speech meant to halt the advance of a specific piece of legislation. Instead, Booker’s performance was a broader critique of Trump’s agenda, meant to hold up the Senate’s business and draw attention to what Democrats are doing to contest the president. Without a majority in either congressional chamber, Democrats have been almost completely locked out of legislative power but are turning to procedural manoeuvres to try to thwart Republicans.
Can his speech rally the anti-Trump resistance?
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Booker is serving his second term in the Senate. He was an unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2020, when he launched his campaign from the steps of his home in Newark. He dropped out after struggling to gain a foothold in a packed field, falling short of the threshold to meet in a January 2020 debate.
But as Democrats search for a next generation of leadership, frustrated with the old-timers at the top, Booker’s speech could cement his status as a leading figure in the party’s opposition to Trump.
Tens of thousands of people were watching on Booker’s Senate YouTube page, as well as on other live streams.
Even before taking to the national political stage, Booker was considered a rising star in the Democratic Party in New Jersey, serving as mayor of Newark, the state’s largest city, from 2006 to 2013.
During college, he played tight end for Stanford University’s football team. He became a Rhodes scholar and graduated from Yale Law before starting his career as an attorney for nonprofits.
He was first elected to the US Senate in 2013 during a special election held after the death of incumbent Democrat Frank Lautenberg, and won his first full term in 2014 and reelection in 2020.
As Democratic colleagues made their way to the Senate chamber to help Booker by asking him questions, he also made heartfelt tributes to his fellow senators, recalling their personal backgrounds and shared experiences in the Senate. Booker also called on Americans to respond not just with resistance to Trump’s actions but with kindness and generosity for those in their communities.
Booker said, “I may be afraid – my voice may shake – but I’m going to speak up more.”
AP
