Cory Booker’s father died in Las Vegas Thursday morning at the age of 76 after recently suffering from a stroke and battling Parkinson’s disease.
The Mayor of Newark is running for the Senate seat vacated by the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg in a special election on Wednesday. He canceled all of his campaign events for the day, his campaign confirmed.
Booker’s father Cary was one of the first black executives at IBM and active in the civil rights movement. He and his wife Carolyn raised Booker and his older brother Cary in Harrington Park, NJ.
“Many people in our city came to know and love Cary Booker. Mayor Booker’s father was an inspiration to him, and someone the mayor has often credited with being a principal reason for him entering public service,” said the mayor’s office in a statement.
Booker often talked about his father’s struggle to pull himself out of poverty on the campaign trail.
“My father was born to a single mom, poor” Booker said on Monday night at a fundraiser in Manhattan.
“My father’s story and my mom’s story are really about people who never gave up on America, people who had every reason to indulge in cynicism and to become skeptics.”