Remember Corey Feldman? He was the little boy in the Lost Boys, my favourite vampire film, mostly because of the presence of a young Kiefer Sutherland, but also I just loved vampires when I was a teenager. He also starred alongside the long departed River Phoenix in Stand by Me. The last I heard of Corey he was surrounded by porn stars, but that’s another story. Remember Corey Haim? He was the other Corey in the Lost Boys, sadly he died back in 2010.
But this post isn’t about them, although it is fun remembering the Lost Boys. No, this post is about Cory (no ‘e’) Booker. Not sure if his fame has spread to the UK, but here in the US and in New York and New Jersey mostly, he is incredibly well known. Cory Booker just got sworn in as one of the two senators for the State of New Jersey. The seat became vacant earlier this year on the death of the long term incumbent, 89 year old Frank Lautenberg.
Why do I care? Well, I have been following his campaign with great interest. Cory Booker was the Mayor of Newark in New Jersey. And like the other Coreys, and me, is in his early 40s and probably loved the Lost Boys too (I speculate there). Cory Booker doesn’t love vampires (I don’t think, it didn’t come up during the campaign) he loves Twitter.
He has 1.4 million followers. He lives on Twitter and he’s really good at it. I don’t know how he manages to respond to so many tweets, but when he does he comes across as a really decent bloke. He is brave enough to re-tweet all the horrible tweets and respond in such a way he comes out the better for it. I’m not so keen on his quotes from various sources, they can come across as a bit sanctimonious, but I’ll forgive that.
If I lived in New Jersey, I would have run with him – he did night time runs all over New Jersey with his supporters. If I lived in New Jersey I probably would have donated some cash because he asked me to so many times (I subscribed to his emails). And I was tempted by the Cory Booker For Senate T shirt and the bumper sticker – he knows how to get people interested. He told me each week how much cash he needed and told me that his opponent was horrible, so I needed to give him more cash. I didn’t, but I like the approach: it’s begging but it’s done nicely.
So, here he is on his first day as a senator. Have a look at the link below to a 90 second video to see what you think of him. Seems like a good bloke, let’s hope he can keep that up in Congress. Oh and by the way, he only gets the seat for a year (he’s finishing Lautenberg’s term and has to stand again to sit for the full six year term) before he has to go through all this again. I think one Cory Booker for Senate campaign is quite enough for me.
nw3 to nyc 