CIVPAC endorses Sen. Cory Booker for reelection to the United States Senate from New Jersey.
We have meaningful policy disagreements with Booker. He is to our left on health care, taxation and several other domestic issues. But elections require comparisons among the candidates actually before the voters, and in this race the choice is unusually clear.
Booker is an experienced senator with a substantial legislative record, a demonstrated willingness to work across party lines, a strong commitment to the democratic institutions of the United States and a broadly internationalist approach to foreign policy. His Republican opponent, Justin Murphy, has respectable qualities of his own, including military service. But Murphy’s refusal to accept the result of the 2020 presidential election presents a threshold problem that outweighs ordinary disagreements over policy.
A Threshold Institutional Test
When Murphy sought the Republican Senate nomination in 2024, the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board asked him directly whether Joe Biden had won the 2020 presidential election. Murphy responded: “No, I don’t accept the 2020 results.”
For CIVPAC, that answer is disqualifying absent compelling evidence that a candidate has subsequently reconsidered it.
We do not require candidates to agree about election procedures, mail voting, voter identification or the conduct of the media. Those are legitimate subjects for political argument. But accepting the lawful outcome of an election after the votes have been counted, challenges adjudicated and the constitutional process completed is a more fundamental obligation.
The peaceful transfer of political power cannot depend upon whether a candidate likes the result.
This concern is especially important in evaluating congressional candidates. One of Congress’s central functions is to serve as an independent constitutional check on executive power. A senator who begins from an unwillingness to accept an adverse presidential election result fails an important test of commitment to the constitutional system itself.
Foreign Policy and Congressional Responsibility
Booker’s record provides considerably more reassurance on those institutional questions.
He has repeatedly defended Congress’s constitutional authority over the use of military force. During the conflict with Iran, Booker helped lead the Senate effort to invoke the War Powers Resolution, arguing that the threat posed by the Iranian regime did not give a president unilateral authority to wage war.
CIVPAC does not necessarily agree with Booker’s substantive judgment about every use of American military force. We do, however, agree strongly with the principle that Congress cannot simply surrender its constitutional responsibilities to a president of either party.
Booker also remains firmly committed to the international system and America’s alliances. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he has supported Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and joined a bipartisan 2026 resolution calling for strong American and transatlantic security guarantees. At a time when support for the postwar international order can no longer be taken for granted in either political debate or electoral politics, that matters substantially to us.
Bipartisanship and Governing Record
Booker’s record of bipartisanship is also genuine rather than rhetorical. He played an important role in passage of the bipartisan First Step Act, one of the more significant criminal-justice reforms of recent years, and he continues to work with Republican senators on legislation in a variety of areas.
That does not make Booker a centrist. It does demonstrate that substantial ideological differences have not prevented him from working with Republicans when there is enough common ground to legislate.
Significant Policy Disagreements
Our endorsement should not be mistaken for agreement with Booker’s entire agenda.
Health Care and Medicare for All
Booker has supported health-care proposals that extend considerably beyond CIVPAC’s preferred health-care framework. We support universal coverage built primarily around competitive private insurance, appropriate subsidies and strong protections for people with preexisting conditions, without creating an open-ended federal entitlement. Booker has supported a substantially larger direct governmental role, including Medicare for All.
“Medicare for All” has become something of a slogan on the left. Medicare can presently pay hospitals and physicians rates that in many cases fall below their fully allocated costs because it covers only part of the population and providers receive substantially higher payments from many privately insured patients. Medicare payments may still cover the marginal cost of treating an additional patient even when they do not cover that patient’s proportional share of the system’s fixed costs.
Extending Medicare payment rates to the entire population would change that arithmetic. Either provider costs and compensation would have to fall, or substantially more public revenue would have to be raised.
Taxation and Economic Policy
Booker’s economic philosophy is also generally to our left. His proposals rely more heavily than we would prefer on redistribution, higher taxation of upper-income households and corporations, and governmental intervention in markets.
Murphy, by contrast, emphasizes limited government, private-sector growth and lower taxes. Those are principles with which CIVPAC sometimes has considerable sympathy. But his specific proposal to abolish the existing Internal Revenue Code and replace it with a 10 to 12 percent flat income tax raises obvious questions about federal revenues and fiscal sustainability unless accompanied by spending reductions on a scale his campaign has not adequately explained.
The difference here illustrates why our endorsements are not simply exercises in identifying which candidate uses more centrist-sounding rhetoric. Policies have to work as arithmetic as well as politics.
Reproductive Freedom and Immigration
The candidates also differ substantially on reproductive freedom. Murphy states that life begins at conception and supports a range of abortion restrictions. Booker strongly supports abortion rights and has continued to advocate protection of access to contraception and reproductive health care.
CIVPAC supports policies broadly in line with the framework established by Roe v. Wade, making Booker considerably closer to our position on this issue.
Immigration produces a similar, although less absolute, contrast. Murphy favors a highly enforcement-oriented approach, including expanded deportation policies, completion of the border wall and deployment of the U.S. military at both the southern and northern borders.
CIVPAC supports effective border enforcement, but we also favor a workable legal immigration system and a realistic path to legal status for many long-term undocumented residents. Booker is generally closer to that balance, although some of his positions are to our left.
A Clear Choice
Justin Murphy deserves respect for his service in the United States Navy and for presenting voters with a reasonably clear account of his conservative beliefs. We also prefer candidates who state their policy positions plainly rather than relying entirely on slogans.
But those positives cannot overcome his refusal to acknowledge the lawful result of the 2020 presidential election.
Cory Booker is not a centrist on many issues, and CIVPAC will continue to disagree with him when we believe his proposals give insufficient weight to market incentives, fiscal discipline or the limits of government.
Those disagreements occur, however, within a shared commitment to constitutional democracy, congressional responsibility, American international leadership and the peaceful transfer of political power.
On those more fundamental questions—and on the overall balance of the candidates’ records and positions—the choice is clear.
CIVPAC endorses Cory Booker for reelection to the United States Senate from New Jersey.