The Color of Politics.(Cory Booker)

One evening this past fall, Barack Obama's Presidential campaign went to Newark, bringing together the two leading figures of what might be called the Oprah Winfrey wing of the Democratic Party. At a downtown rally, the task of firing up the crowd and introducing the candidate fell to Cory Booker, Newark's thirty-eight-year-old mayor, who is Obama's most prominent backer in New Jersey. Obama and Booker have shared in Winfrey's admiration and largesse, and it was through the Winfrey connection that the two men met, and became friends. Their deeper kinship resides in their identities as breakthrough figures--African-American politicians whose appeal transcends race. Both men, reared in the post-Selma era and schooled at elite institutions, developed a political style of conciliation, rather than confrontation, which complemented their natural gifts and, as it happens, nicely served their ambitions. The wish for a post-racial politics is a powerful force, and rewards those who seem to carry its promise. Both Booker and Obama had been scouted by the political pros and the media almost from the start of their public lives. Presidential potential was discovered in Booker when he was still a city councilman, and in Obama when he was a state legislator in Illinois. Obama decided to chance the fast track, declaring a run for the White House before reaching midway in his first United States Senate term. But it may have been Booker who followed the more audacious course: he cast his fate with Newark.

As the hour of the Obama event approached, Booker was in another part of town, the city's Ironbound section, in the parish hall of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, conducting his monthly open-house meeting with constituents. The session was proceeding, as most do, with Newarkers asking for the kind of help that Booker, in most cases, couldn't provide. Many wanted work, for themselves or for family. A white-haired lady complained about the mounting garbage in the vacant lot across from her home. A diminutive woman named Maria Bekowski just wanted Booker to hear her story: her husband had died, the landlord had raised the rent, and now their crepe business was gone. Booker moved around the room, listening earnestly to each story, until an aide signalled that it was time to leave. He hugged the crepe lady, and slipped out the back door of the church.

I rode along as Booker's black S.U.V., driven by a plainclothes police sergeant, eased into rush-hour traffic. Most of the cars were heading out of the city, an indication of just one of Newark's many problems. Unemployment is double the national average, and of the city's hundred and fifty thousand jobs more than three-fourths are held by people who don't live in Newark. That means not only a smaller tax base but diminished civic involvement. Booker had sold himself to Newark as someone who could sell Newark to others, and he spends much of his time with capitalized outsiders, talking up Newark's advantages--its proximity to New York City (ten miles away), its port, its airport, and its rail systems. At the moment, though, Newark's most marketable commodity is Booker.

When he arrived in the city a decade ago, he was a second-year student at Yale Law, and already notable for his promise. He had been student-body president and a member of the football team at Stanford, and had studied at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. He was a striking young man, with blue-green eyes and a quick smile, animated and immensely personable--the sort of person who attracts important mentors. One of these was Ray Chambers, the leverage-buyout pioneer, who is a Newark native and one of the city's most influential citizens. Chambers helped convince Booker that he had a political future in Newark, and he and others have aggressively positioned Booker as the face of a new Newark.

During the drive to the Obama event, Booker returned a call from Chambers, who told Booker that he had arranged a meeting with a group of important developers in New York, people who had avoided Newark for years; now they were eager to hear from the city's young mayor. By the time Booker finished talking, we had arrived at the rally site, the Performing Arts Center, and he had not yet looked at his talking points. He read aloud from the first page--"Barack Obama draws on his ingenuity, authenticity, integrity, to unite America"--and frowned.

"Sounds very vanilla to me," he said. "I'll have to think of some chocolate, real quick. Or some Neapolitan, maybe, is the way to go. All righty! We'll wing it!" With that, he was out of the car and heading toward the backstage door. Inside the auditorium, the orchestra seats were nearly filled by Obama enthusiasts, and the candidate's travelling media corps was in position. Booker made a startling entrance--he ran to the center of the stage, grabbed the microphone, and hollered, "Hellooooo!" The crowd whooped, and he added, with a bob of the head, "It's hot in here!"

I had heard Booker give his Newark pitch to civic groups--a measured appeal, with references to "transportation modalities" and "funding mechanisms"--and his performance that evening was a surprise. He sprang directly into the mode of a tent preacher, at mid-sermon. "Some people applaud change, but we want transformation," he intoned. "Some people say we need to take a step forward. I say we need a quantum leap.