It is with a heavy heart and a fire in my belly that I write this. I have watched Senator Cory Booker’s political career for years, often hoping his stirring orations would translate into principled action. Yet, his recent refusal to endorse Zohran Mamdani for Mayor of New York City is not just a disappointment; it is a damning indictment of who he truly serves.

This is not an isolated incident. It is a pattern.

The first time I ran for the Senate, Cory Booker strongly supported Bob Menendez, a man now residing in a federal prison cell. In 2009, he threw his support behind Republican billionaire Michael Bloomberg instead of the Democratic nominee, Bill Thompson. And let’s not forget the company he kept during his own ascent: his campaign was buoyed by the support of mob lawyer Michael Critchley, power broker George Norcross, and even Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

This is not the resume of a progressive. It is the resume of a politician who confuses access with integrity and fundraising with leadership.

Cory Booker raises a lot of money, and in a nation where the greedy one percent has waged a relentless class war against the rest of us, that is a very bad sign. While people starve on the streets of the richest nation on Earth, while families sleep in shelters, while most Americans are one missed paycheck away from insolvency, Senator Booker is busy crafting policies that do not offend his wealthy contributors.

He has pretended to straddle the fence for so long that the splinters are now a part of him. The side he has chosen is obvious.

Zohran Mamdani represents the future that Booker only speaks of in past-tense platitudes. Mamdani is a part of the movement that understands the crisis we are in. Let us be clear: Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are not the fringe; they are the moral and political mainstream of a Democratic Party that is finally waking up to the needs of its people.

And this is precisely why Cory Booker cannot bring himself to endorse Mamdani. It reveals the fundamental truth about his tenure: he never stood in the way of the forces destroying our democracy.

Millionaires and billionaires support politicians like Cory Booker for the same reason they supported Donald Trump—because the politicians who sell us out are for sale. That is why Booker, despite his eloquent speeches, never effectively stopped Trump. He never stopped him from gutting the Voting Rights Act, from outlawing abortion, from invading American cities with military forces, from abducting protestors, from bombing and killing with impunity, from stealing public money, from accepting foreign bribes, or from cutting healthcare and food for struggling families.

If given another six years, we know with certainty that Booker still won’t stop Trump or the next iteration of him. He is too indebted to the same system.

His refusal to endorse Zohran Mamdani is a cowardly act of allegiance to that system. It is a betrayal of the progressive values he claims to hold.

Shame on you, Cory Booker. The people are watching, and we are choosing a side. It’s the side you’re standing against.