There’s a certain pride I get when seeing politicians and lawmakers that represent me and my home state of New Jersey are on the national stage articulating and fighting for the values that many of us hold dear. This pride is present regardless of the party that the politician is a member of – what matters is what he or she is espousing, not if a they have an R or a D next to their names.

There are many times that I have been proud to call Senator Bob Menendez my Senator, especially with regard to his stance on fighting dictators and tyrannical regimes across the world. There have been instances where I felt this way when Governor Christie and Murphy have made national appearances. Nearly every lawmakers that serves us is someone who has at least something in their record that should be applauded.

My enthusiasm stops whenever I see Senator Cory Booker speaking in front of a national crowd. Having followed his career ever since he was elected as the young, brash and golden-tongued phenom mayor of Newark, I have come to see how many of his accomplishments are nothing more than farces and how so many conflicts of interest he has. Being a serious contender for next year’s Democratic presidential nomination, Booker now has a larger platform to disseminate his positions – or rather those that he thinks voters want to hear.

Senator Booker is a master of speaking out of both sides of his mouth. He sold himself to voters as a moderate, one who makes decisions on his own and not based on what political bosses in the Democratic party have to say. But his record shows that he simply takes positions based on which way the political winds are blowing. Take for example Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran – Booker always claimed to be strongly pro-Israel, yet he voted in favor of the deal. Israel, the country with the most to lose from a bad nuclear deal with the Iranian regime, was all but begging US Senators not to approve it. Several months ago, Booker took a picture with students from the anti-Israel BDS movement who were holding a Palestinian flag in the picture. Of course, Booker still claims to be staunchly pro-Israel, but the vote and picture have shown me otherwise.

Most recently, Booker said that if elected president, his first move would be to issue an executive order closing down all detention facilities holding illegal immigrants who crossed the border from Mexico into the US. This comes at a time when every Democratic candidate is trying to outdo each other in their support of immigrants who skirt the legal immigration process.

But is Booker actually in favor of shutting down those detention facilities? Probably not. You see, one of his major supporters runs at least one of them. On Friday, Booker attended a fundraiser for himself co-hosted by Joseph DiVincenzo, who is the overseer of a jail where illegal immigrants are housed. His detention facility has been cited multiple times for having poor conditions. So it’s fair to assume that his promise to issue such an executive order is pure pandering designed to garner more support for himself from an increasingly liberal Democratic base.

Booker also made a complete mockery of himself at the first of the Democratic primary debates when he made a woeful attempt at speaking Spanish. It was so bad that a native Spanish speaker said she at first thought Booker was speaking French. This is the type of embarrassing behavior Booker engages in all the time.

Taking pride in our lawmakers is something that we should all do. These are the people elected to serve us and to stand on principles they share with their constituents. Unfortunately, it seems that Cory Booker is more interested in becoming president than sticking to morals and values that he truly believes in. That’s embarrassing for all of New Jersey.