Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell has long been regarded as an enemy of Black people, beginning, conservatively, in the late 1980s, when he voted against the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987, and continuing to this day with his unwavering support of the Trump White House.
But a young, Black, educated and homegrown Kentuckian who succeeded in securing a seat in the Kentucky House of Representatives in 2018, Charles Booker, aims to defeat the veteran Republican senator.
theGrio spoke exclusively with Booker ahead of the June 23 primary, which is today, about what inspired him to enter politics, how the police killing of Breonna Taylor impacted him, and why Kentuckians should vote for him.
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Like far too many Black families, Charles Booker grew up surrounded by poverty. “My childhood really shaped my view of the world, which is one of the things that really led me to go into politics,” Booker shared with theGrio. “Seeing how hard [my mother] worked just let me know that we weren’t struggling because we were lazy, because we were morally deficient.”
Seeing that economic disparity led Booker into politics.
