Working Families Party Live Q&A with Cory Booker CORY BOOKER LIVE Q&A: The fifth Working Families Party live Q&A starts now with Cory Booker, moderated by WFP’s National Director Maurice Mitchell. (via act.tv) Posted by Working Families Party on Tuesday, August 27, 2019

WASHINGTON — Cory Booker said he will work with anyone who can help the communities he was elected to represent.

So if it means working with Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley to pass criminal justice legislation, Gov. Chris Christie, Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo, South Jersey political boss George Norcross or current U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Booker said count me in.

“I don’t have time for the kind of purity that some people want,” Booker told the Working Families Party at a discussion Tuesday night in Las Vegas. "I live with an everyday urgency. Joe D. is my friend. I worked with Chris Christie — I could write a dissertation on our disagreements but i could text him right now.

“I’m sorry, I’m going to build working relationships with those people to advance the cause of justice. That’s why I got in politics.”

The Working Families Party endorsed U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in 2016, and Booker was playing defense when he talked to the group Tuesday.

Working Family Party leaders, for example, had called on Booker to cancel his June fundraiser with DiVincenzo and Norcross, and then members called on him to return the money.

The Rev. Tim Merrill of Camden asked Booker to return a reported $470,000 he said Norcross helped raised for him. Booker said the figure was wrong.

“I don’t agree with your characterization of how much resources this individual raised for my campaign,” he said.

The question comes in light of task force created by Gov. Phil Murphy that is looking at whether a state program designed to encourage economic development enriched Norcross.

“That seems like a contradiction that you would would associate yourself with folks who seem not in line with the values that your campaign has sort of lifted up,” Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, told Booker on stage. “When people ask you to give back donations from folks like that, do you understand where they’re coming from?”

Booker said new construction in Newark has benefited from the same types of incentive grants from the Economic Development Authority that have come under fire for helping Norcross.

“I have core principles, core values that I will not violate, but I’m in politics to fight for the people who don’t often sit at the table,” he said. “If you want somebody who’s just going to say, ‘I’m sorry, my way or the highway,’ that’s probably not me. I want results.”

That’s also why Booker said he aligned himself with U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos on the board of Alliance for School Choice, which advocates for options other than public schools. As mayor of Newark, Booker championed the school choice movement, looking for alternatives to the traditional public school system where some inner-city students were struggling.

“I will never fault myself for trying to find solutions that work,” he told Ingrid Walker Henry, vice president of the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association.

Booker said he supported, and still supports, public charter schools, and his efforts to improve public education in the city showed real results.

“If anybody wants to come after the schools that are educating my children in Newark, they’re going to have to come through me,” he said.

Booker voted against DeVos’ nomination as U.S. education secretary.

The senator also came under fire from Maurice BP-Weeks, who grew up in Newark and now is co-executive director of the Action Center on Race & the Economy and a member of the Working Families Party.

BP-Weeks questioned Booker’s campaign contributions from employees of drug companies, many of which are based in New Jersey. Booker has received $430,595 from drug industry employees for his Senate races, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Booker has faced questions about that financial support in the past. He has sworn off money from corporate political action committees and drug company executives, but not from rank and file workers who have jobs at one of the state’s major employers.

“Will I take money from somebody on my block or somebody in my community who just has a regular job?” Booker said. “I’m not going to return that money at all.”

Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant or on Facebook. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.

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