The senator received prayers from the congregation at his Baptist church in a small service in Newark last night. Twelve hours later, he told the world.
NEWARK, New Jersey— At a small service in Newark last night, people prayed for what Cory Booker was about to do.
With each prayer, hands clasped and hands released. The congregation at Metropolitan Baptist Church, Cory Booker’s small home church, in the middle of the ward he started out representing on the city council, grasped hands Thursday night as the Reverend Dr. David Jefferson called up preachers and congregants. A prayer for consecration. A prayer for guidance and direction. A prayer for Esther, for the women in the room.
“Let this nation see that something good comes out of Newark, New Jersey,” a woman from the congregation said. “Let Cory know that everything he does, as it abides with you, blesses the future as much as it blesses the past, as much as it honors the future.” Over 40 minutes, no one made any kind of official announcement. But by the end of the prayer service, everyone knew why they were there.
The New Jersey senator announced his presidential campaign hours later on Friday morning, the first day of Black History Month, with a run of early morning appearances on black and Spanish-language radio. His first big interview would be over the river in Manhattan for “The View.”
After a break for the Super Bowl, there will be more next week, then a swing to South Carolina and Iowa next weekend. His launch video, set to the snare drums from a high school marching band, runs through his own family’s story of white lawyers helping his family break through a pattern of local housing discrimination in a way that changed the course of his life. It splices together clips of resistance marches and civil rights marches, talks about collective action and interwoven destiny, panning from shots of the homeless on a city street to a field growing corn.
Booker’s campaign is set to roll out big lists of staff hires and supporters in all the early presidential primary states, years of preparations unleashed for a show of force he and his aides think are going to pave the way for a traditional ground game, despite being built around a black man obsessed with the “conspiracy of love” who is not a traditional candidate at all. But before it began, he brought together a group of friends, supporters, and current and former aides, for what the reverend described on Thursday night as an intimate prayer service. Booker’s Senate office in Washington is filled with religious books; last week he quoted the Torah in a speech to U. S. Conference of Mayors. He’s comfortable sitting for six hours in a church service, head bowed, nodding along. Even as other plans shifted, he knew he wanted this to be where he spent the night before everything became official.
Still, the evening was such a secret that some of the invitees weren’t even sure why he was there and asked if he was really about to announce his White House run. Aides alerted just three reporters. The only sign from the outside that anything special was happening inside Metropolitan Baptist was two police cars parked on the street and in the parking lot. Their flashing lights shone through the stained glass windows as the prayers went on.
Booker sat in a chair by himself, most of the time leaning forward with his eyes closed. His mother was called up to sit next to him.
After each prayer, he stood and patted his heart twice the way he always does, and gave a hug. The reverend sent someone for his oil—this was going to be old school, he told them—and he literally anointed Booker, drew a cross on his forehead, and then laid his hand on the senator’s head while his wife grasped the back of the neck.
