He eats vegan at Fatburger, and other things Californians need to know about Cory Booker

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker has plenty of ties to California and is vowing to compete in the Golden State as he looks beyond Iowa and South Carolina, where he hopes African American voters will help propel him forward. His top issues include the environment and housing affordability.

Here are five things Californians need to know about the senator as the state’s March 3, 2020 primary election approaches:

1. Booker has lots of California connections

Booker most recently spent Christmas with his family in Los Angeles and considers California “a second home for me since I was a little, little kid.”

Long before he was elected senator, Booker played football at Stanford University and later served on the school’s board of trustees.

He said he knows the state intimately, and if elected would be “the closest thing to a Californian in the White House we’ve had in a long time.”

“Knowing California, which is the largest delegate haul there is and an incredibly diverse state, California is built for my campaign,” Booker said on The Bee’s California Nation podcast.

When he’s not campaigning in the Golden State, he enjoys good vegan food, particularly the milkshake offering at Fatburger, a fast food chain founded in Los Angeles.

“I know the Bay Area, I know Southern California, I really feel connected there,” he said.

2. Booker wants to cap rent costs

Booker worries the tax code does a lot more to benefit homeowners than renters and is pushing for a renters credit to ensure Americans don’t pay more than 30 percent of their income on housing.

“Housing is a California crisis and a national crisis,” Booker said. “The first thing I’m going to do is a very big plan to make a much bigger investment in renters. ... If you’re paying more than 30 percent of your income in rent, you get a refundable tax credit back to your family,” which would cover the difference between the area’s median rent and 30 percent of your income.

To ease the financial burdens of less affluent Californians, he said he’d also double the earned income tax credit, expand the child tax credit and offer incentives for local governments to create less restrictive zoning laws.

3. He wants companies to pay up for decades-old pollution

California is home to some of the nation’s most polluted sites. It has 97 properties polluted by dangerous wastes, which is second only to the 114 Superfund sites in New Jersey.

The Superfund program, which was created in 1980, was largely funded through petroleum, chemical and corporate taxes imposed by Congress. Since Congress allowed the taxes to expire in 1995, most of the money going into the program has come from taxpayer dollars.

While taxpayers have spent more than $21 billion in the last two decades, hundreds of companies responsible for contaminating water paid little to nothing, according to a News21 analysis.

Booker, who joined two of his colleagues in launching the Senate’s environmental justice caucus earlier this year, is calling for the Superfund taxes to be reauthorized and for the Environmental Protection Agency to help get hazardous sites cleaned up faster.

“I want to redo that polluter pays tax,” Booker said. “I also want to make sure we’re putting public money into it. Every day we waste in not cleaning up these sites is a day that more and more seniors and children and families are being poisoned.”

4. Booker insists he’ll stay in race for California’s primary

Californians begin voting on Feb. 3 — the same day as the Iowa caucuses. If Booker or other candidates drop out shortly after Iowa but before California’s March 3, 2020 election, the votes of many Californians could be wasted.

While Booker didn’t qualify for the December debate and is unlikely to appear on stage for the party’s debate in January, he’s adamant he has a pathway to the nomination and will fight for Californians’ votes.

“I’m going to be in this race not just through March 3, but we plan on being the nominee,” Booker said. “We know the strength of my campaign builds as we go down south, and that’s why Super Tuesday is so important. ... We really believe that not only will we compete in California but we’ll win a lot of delegates there.”

5. He’s tired of Democrats criticizing each other

At the Dec. 19 debate in Los Angeles, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders went after South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg for his decision to hold high-dollar fundraisers in California, including one at a “wine cave” in Napa Valley.

Nearly two-thirds of Buttigieg’s appearances in California have been fundraisers, according to a Sacramento Bee analysis of candidate visits. That compares to 69 percent for former Vice President Joe Biden, 44 percent for Booker and 19 percent for entrepreneur Andrew Yang.

Booker said he didn’t appreciate Warren’s criticism of Buttigieg and would prefer candidates to talk about publicly financed elections rather than attacking one another.

“Democrats, let’s stop attacking each other in these kinds of ways,” Booker said. “Anybody who wants to question the integrity of the vice president and Pete Buttigieg, come on. Everybody on the stage, every one of us wants to radically change campaign finance laws. It is a broken system. ... We’ve got to be careful because if we start attacking the character of other people that are running, when it comes time for the general election, are your supporters going to support that candidate you’ve just been attacking on character issues?”

Booker boasted about the friendships he’s formed on the campaign trail, including one with Yang.

“I just feel blessed to be in a campaign with people that a really like and believe in, frankly, and that we can conduct ourselves in a way that shows that kind of mutual respect,” Booker said. “Andrew Yang and I, we’re competitors in a primary, but we’re good friends. We like each other, and he rocks. He’s a great guy.”

This story was originally published January 2, 2020 at 12:01 AM.