The News
When Chris Coons stepped into his party’s meeting room after listening to President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress in March, Cory Booker had a surprise waiting: a room of social media influencers ready to interview him.
“I’m looking at him. And he goes, ‘I know you’ve never met these people. I know you’ve never heard of what they’re on,’” Coons recalled to Semafor.
Booker listed the follower counts of social media personalities in the room, Coons added, and then told him: “Just go with it.”
The Delaware senator took Booker’s advice — as have many of his Democratic colleagues this year. Booker is on an active mission to tone the party’s weak media muscles, an atrophy that many now believe cost Democrats in 2024.
It’s part of Booker’s new role in the caucus: modernizing a party that he believes relies too much on traditional print and TV outlets to get its message out.
Booker took his concerns directly to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer last Congress, delivering the bad news that Republicans were “crushing us by the millions” when it came to online reach. Some of the party’s most senior senators were not even on the radar of the growing number of Americans who consume politics digitally, Booker told Schumer.
The New Yorker still uses a flip phone, but he is also a former Democratic messaging chief. And so Schumer greenlit Booker’s project, just as Trump took office.
“Our caucus was not understanding that we put so much energy into going on MSNBC, but more people are on these devices,” Booker said in an interview this week about his social media work. “We’ve got to start shifting our strategy towards having a digital and media strategy that could break through, that could capture attention.”
“We lost young people, and young men in particular,” he added. “And a lot of that was because we weren’t on the platforms that they show up on.”
According to data Booker presented during a Senate Democratic caucus meeting this month, his approach is working to help Democrats catch up on multiple platforms. He says he’s quadrupled online engagement in the caucus, from roughly 400,000 engagements a day to 2 million. Senate Democrats have added 15 million new followers across platforms, outpacing Republicans significantly.
Booker’s colleagues say he weighs in constantly with tips and tricks to get more likes and comments on their posts. He doesn’t want them just posting press releases or clips of their TV hits, but something more personal — like direct-to-camera videos whacking “Trump’s thug lawyer” (from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.) or personal photography (the forte of Sen. Angus King, I-Maine).
As Booker put it: “Authenticity matters. If you sound like the morning announcements in high school or Charlie Brown’s teacher, you’re not going to break through.”
On a personal level, Booker isn’t that different from the average burnt-out social media user. He conceded he wakes up at 4am for “doomscrolling” and has his own platform preferences.
He used to “live on Twitter,” now X, but has soured on it. Lately Instagram is his “happy place.” He believes children should not be on social media.
On a political level, however, Booker looks at it as a professional obligation. He’s invited platform executives to talk to Senate Democrats about how their algorithms work.
“I wouldn’t say he works me over; it’s not like I’m under duress,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M. “He’ll call me up or text me and say, ‘Hey, you did this on social. But if you do that, you know you’ll get more engagement.’”
Booker identifies YouTube and TikTok as the two platforms his party needs to prioritize, citing “mushrooming” growth on YouTube. He’s unapologetic about the value of TikTok, even as bipartisan security concerns persist about its Beijing-based ownership.
“We were one of the few people in Congress that were using it. Never stopped using it,” Booker said. “I made a hard pitch on TikTok to my colleagues.”
As an example, Booker cited the TikTok presence of Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz. — even after Kelly voted to force the company’s divestment from Chinese owner ByteDance.
“I still feel that way” about divestment, Kelly told Semafor, “but until that happens, it’s a powerhouse of a messaging platform. There are a lot of people that get all of their information from TikTok.”
In this article:
Know More
Booker can chart his party’s course on social media thanks to his own success navigating it. He’s not just a serial poster, but one of the first Democratic senators who feel like they were born online — in part because much of the country met him on the internet when he was Newark’s mayor.
Last week he went viral for walking out of a Judiciary Committee vote. Earlier this year, he gave a 25-hour stemwinder that broke the record for longest Senate speech ever. He surpassed former Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., who’d set the mark filibustering the Civil Rights Act.
“That was one of the biggest moments of all time on TikTok, 340 million human beings engaging with that content,” Booker said.
It helps that Booker is loud, outgoing and convivial, while he knows some of his colleagues are different. So he’s encouraging them to be themselves. That includes Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who recently interviewed Booker at 1:45am during an exhausting series of votes.
“People may make fun of Mark Warner, but he’s seeing steady growth … it’s authentic, it’s real. It’s not him trying to be someone else,” Booker said.
Room for Disagreement
Though Booker is clearly successful on social media, not all of his viral forays land perfectly.
During Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 confirmation hearing, the senator likened his demand for the release of new documents on the nominee to the revolt led by the Thracian slave Spartacus.
That moment lives on so clearly in Republicans’ minds that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, mockingly called Booker “Spartacus” during a hearing just last month.
Burgess’s view
Chatting with Booker for 30 minutes made me think about my own social media use: Am I posting too much? Not enough? Am I on the right platforms? He seems to be having the same effect on his fellow Democratic caucus members.
You can see the Booker-inflected changes if you bop around the party’s social media accounts: more direct-to-camera riffs, fewer press releases and canned quotes, and more shareable content, like Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., explaining what a rescission is.
Will it all have an impact on the 2026 election? Who knows. But it is notable that Democrats, for perhaps the first time, have someone in their ranks thinking deeply about this. Booker said I should be, too, as a reporter.
But I’m not sure I’m ready to expand to TikTok just yet, Senator.
Notable
- The Senate Rules Committee has warned senators and staff against using TikTok, Punchbowl reported.
- Booker fasted and dehydrated himself before his marathon speech, CNN reported.