By Katie Halper • @kthalps • 11 years ago

Cory Booker becomes this country’s fourth elected African American Senator… EVER

Newark Mayor and U.S. Senate candidate Booker speaks to the media after casting his ballot during the Senate primary election in NewarkWednesday night Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D) beat Steve Lonegan (R) in a race for the New Jersey Senate. Booker will be replacing  Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s (D), who died in June of pneumonia.

Booker’s victory was predicted but what is shocking is that his win makes him the fourth African American to ever be elected to the U.S. Senate. He joins the ranks of  Sens. Edward William Brooke (R-MA), Carol Moseley Braun (D-IL) and President Barack Obama. Other African Americans have served in the Senate but, as ThinkProgress points out, were either appointed by governors to fill vacant seats or were selected by state legislatures. Though African Americans make up 13% of the country’s population, they only represent 2% of the Senate.

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Born and raised on the mean streets of New York City’s Upper West Side, Katie Halper is a comic, writer, blogger, satirist and filmmaker based in New York. Katie graduated from The Dalton School (where she teaches history) and Wesleyan University (where she learned that labels are for jars.) A director of Living Liberally and co-founder/performer in Laughing Liberally, Katie has performed at Town Hall, Symphony Space, The Culture Project, D.C. Comedy Festival, all five Netroots Nations, and The Nation Magazine Cruise, where she made Howard Dean laugh! and has appeared with Lizz Winstead, Markos Moulitsas, The Yes Men, Cynthia Nixon and Jim Hightower. Her writing and videos have appeared in The New York Times, Comedy Central, The Nation Magazine, Gawker, Nerve, Jezebel, the Huffington Post, Alternet and Katie has been featured in/on NY Magazine, LA Times, In These Times, Gawker,Jezebel, MSNBC, Air America, GritTV, the Alan Colmes Show, Sirius radio (which hung up on her once) and the National Review, which called Katie “cute and some what brainy.” Katie co-produced Tim Robbins’s film Embedded, (Venice Film Festival, Sundance Channel); Estela Bravo’s Free to Fly (Havana Film Festival, LA Latino Film Festival); was outreach director for The Take, Naomi Klein/Avi Lewis documentary about Argentine workers (Toronto & Venice Film Festivals, Film Forum); co-directed New Yorkers Remember the Spanish Civil War, a video for Museum of the City of NY exhibit, and wrote/directed viral satiric videos including Jews/ Women/ Gays for McCain.

Katie is a writer, comedian, filmmaker, and New Yorker.

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