Booker Endorses Biden

Booker’s endorsement comes one day after Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., endorsed Biden, and the two senators will appear with him at a rally in Detroit on Monday night. Booker will also campaign alongside Biden in Flint, Michigan, earlier in the day and attend a fundraiser with him.

“It a time for us to beat Donald Trump and it became very clear to me that Joe Biden is the right person to do that,” Booker said in an interview on “CBS This Morning,” after announcing his endorsement in a tweet.

“We have to unify and show our strength and I think this Tuesday could be a pivotal day in our primary progress, but it’s about time that we start unifying as a party and begin the work to beat Donald Trump, and frankly save our nation.”

The event in Michigan, which holds its delegate-heavy primary Tuesday, will be yet another public show of moderate Democratic support for the former vice president on the eve of a major vote in the presidential race.

It recalls last Monday night, when Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas all spoke out for Biden on the eve of Super Tuesday.

Booker and Harris were two of the most prominent black candidates to run for president, and their endorsements come as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont scrambles to make up ground among black voters in Michigan, where they make up a sizable part of the electorate.

“African American voters in the South, African American voters here in Detroit, they have played a pivotal role in my entire lifetime in choosing the Democratic nominee,” Booker said. He pointed to Biden’s deep connections with black voters and what Booker saw as “understanding the issues of race and frankly racial reconciliation and racial justice, and even saying things now about choosing a black woman on the Supreme Court.”

During the campaign, Booker repeatedly challenged Biden on his criminal justice record, including his vote for the 1994 crime bill, and criticized the former vice president’s use of the word “boy” in his warm recollections of working with segregationist senators (Biden eventually called Booker to apologize).

And one debate fracas, where Biden attacked Booker’s tenure as mayor of Newark, New Jersey, elicited one of Booker’s most memorable moments: “Mr. Vice President, there’s a saying in my community. You’re dipping into the Kool-Aid and you don’t even know the flavor.”

Although six states vote Tuesday, Michigan, where Sanders’ surprise victory in 2016 signaled the strength of his insurgent presidential campaign, has become a critical battleground for Sanders and Biden to show both their ability to turn out key blocs of support and to expand the electorate in a state that will undoubtedly be a major target for President Donald Trump in the general election.

Sanders canceled events this weekend in Mississippi to focus his efforts on Michigan, effectively ceding another state in the South to Biden while redoubling his effort in Michigan to prevent the former vice president from amassing an insurmountable delegate lead early in the primary calendar.

Biden also picked up two major endorsements, as two national gun control advocacy groups — Everytown for Gun Safety and the Brady Campaign — announced their support for Biden, evidence that Sanders’ past positions on gun control could undermine his support on an issue popular with many Democratic voters.

Booker, despite dropping out of the presidential race before the nation’s first primary contest, had campaigned in Detroit this cycle in an effort to pitch himself as the best candidate to reenergize the fractured Obama coalition and excite black voters in swing states that Hillary Clinton lost in 2016.

Although Biden has indicated that he would most likely select a woman as his running mate, Booker’s support for Biden as the race effectively narrows to two candidates will inevitably draw some speculation as to the New Jersey senator’s future.

Elected to the Senate in 2013, Booker, the telegenic former mayor, was long seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party, destined for an eventual national campaign. But he struggled to break through in the crowded 2020 field and ended his campaign early, dropping out of the presidential race three weeks before the Iowa caucuses.

Biden, who achieved sweeping victories in both the South Carolina primary and in the Super Tuesday contests on the strength of black voters across the country, now counts the backing of all the major former black candidates for president, having earned the endorsements of Harris and former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts in recent days.

(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.)

Booker is up for reelection in New Jersey this year, and when he dropped out of the presidential race he immediately moved some of his campaign apparatus over to his Senate reelection bid.

Although his favorability rating in the state took a small dip as he campaigned across the country for president, Booker is still immensely popular at home at a time when New Jersey is shifting ever bluer, becoming one of the most Democratic states in the country. Of the 12 members of the state’s congressional delegation, only two are Republican.

New Jersey is one of the last states to vote in the Democratic primary, and the 126 pledged delegates up for grabs there in June were seen as a possible final stand for whoever was left fighting for the Democratic nomination. But with the field essentially winnowed to a two-person race, it is unlikely that the state will play a major role in helping to decide the nominee.

Although Booker is in the middle of his own campaign, he temporarily turned over his fundraising list and apparatus to the Biden effort early Monday, sending an email that directed people to the Booker for Senate page with a disclosure: “100% of your contribution will go to the Biden for President campaign.”

The email contained a slightly retooled applause line from Booker’s own stump speech.

“Because Joe Biden understands that beating Donald Trump is the floor,” Booker wrote. “It is not the ceiling.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .