Cory Booker’s Critics from the Left Are Missing the Point

The cost of a Senate seat, after all, averaged $10,476,451 during the 2012 elections. With that steep of a cost, can we expect anything other than politicians sometimes having to speak out of both sides of their mouths?

In February 2018, Sen. Cory Booker (D-Nj.) announced that he would no longer accept PAC (political action committee) money for campaign funding if the PAC has ties to a for-profit organization. He is another face in a line of Senate Democrats, including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-Ny.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Ma.) making this same pledge. Mr. Booker’s decision came in response to extensive criticism for certain healthcare-related votes that were perceived as doing the bidding of pharmaceutical corporations, who had donated to his campaign, at the expense of patients.

Booker was one of 12 Democrats who voted against a measure that would have allowed Americans to purchase imported drugs from Canada at a cheaper cost. Democratic activists questioned Mr. Booker’s liberal credentials in the aftermath of his vote, and the New Jersey Senator was left to field incredulous and critical social media responses, including from liberal group Our Revolution and from comedy writer Kerri Doherty.

“Despite an effort to spin his decision as a moral awakening, his about-face was almost certainly due to bad press alone.”

Some fact checkers have argued that the claims against Mr. Booker’s vote were misleading, given the fact that all 13 Senate Democrats, including Mr. Booker, also voted for a separate amendment aimed at facilitating lower drug prices, which did not pass. Either way, Mr. Booker broke against the supposed Democratic norm and joined Republican colleagues to kill the bill and, thus, temporarily halt the importation of the cheaper Canadian drugs.