Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who is running for president, paid tribute to Hillary Clinton during his keynote address in Selma, Ala., marking the 54th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.
Booker, speaking at Brown Chapel AME Church’s annual commemorative service attended by Clinton, responded to a congregation member who shouted that the former secretary of state, the party’s 2016 presidential nominee, “won” the 2016 election against President Trump.
“She got more votes,” the New Jersey Democrat replied, referring to Clinton’s popular vote victory. “She got more votes.”
Booker, who announced his White House bid at the start of February, warned the crowd the country was facing a “moral moment,” where the dream was “under attack” and dreamers were “in danger.” He cited a range of issues, from some communities lacking access to clean water to lawmaker inaction on gun control reforms.
“We’ve got to dream bigger dreams in America, where we don’t lead the world in incarceration, but in job creation and higher education,” Booker said. “We must dream bigger dreams again in America, that we can banish bigotry and heal hate and that we will elect leaders that know that’s the only way to unite people. That is what it takes to make America great.”
[Related: Hillary Clinton hugs Cory Booker, shakes hands with Bernie Sanders in Selma]
Clinton was in Selma to receive the 2019 International Unity Award earlier Sunday at the Martin and Coretta Scott King Unity Breakfast. Clinton used her remarks at both events to talk about the importance of voter rights and protections, offering as an example Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’ loss in Georgia last year. Abrams accused her opponent, then-Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp, of tipping the scales in his favor as Georgia’s elections supervisor.
“Let us celebrate this 54th anniversary, but let us not mistake what our mission must be,” Clinton said at Brown’s Chapel. “I too come from a faith tradition of being a doer, not just a hearer of the word. And I know that if we, if we do our part, we can take back this country and put it back on the path that was begun and forged here in Selma 54 years ago.”
The unity breakfast was also attended by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who touted the benefits of automatic voter registration. Clinton and Sanders reportedly shook hands days after he spoke, days after Sanders told ABC’s “The View” it was unlikely that he would seek campaign strategy advice from his former political foe
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who is mulling a 2020 White House bid, was additionally in Alabama for the services.
The events marked the “Bloody Sunday” march, where civil rights activists clashed with Alabama State Troopers on Edmund Pettus Bridge. Images of the violent scenes help build support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
House Democrats this week re-introduced the Voting Rights Advancement Act, a move to repair the 1965 legislation, part of which was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013.
