Sen. John Kennedy and Sen. Cory Booker sit on opposite sides of the dais, but that hasn’t stopped Mr. Kennedy, Louisiana Republican, from admiring his New Jersey Democratic colleague.
This week, Mr. Kennedy called Mr. Booker the “prime minister of cool” as they joined together to found the Senate’s Creators Caucus, dedicated to trying to understand and assist the interests of online “influencers.”
Meeting with influencers from beauty, tech, sports, mental health and lifestyles, the senators said they should be seen as entrepreneurs, holding down an important part of the market.
“The citizens of the world now get their information from you,” Mr. Kennedy told the influencers on Tuesday. “They used to get it from newspapers — that has changed.”
He said the best thing the government can do is protect their property rights, then get out of the way.
“What can government do for you? Frankly, the best thing government can do for you is leave you alone,” he said. “You do not want government involved in what you say and when you say it.”
Mr. Booker cast himself as a consumer of internet entrepreneurs, saying he’s received advice from online about books to read and policy issues to act upon as a senator.
He’s also a bit of an influencer himself.
When he was mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Mr. Booker used Twitter to communicate about potholes that needed to be repaired. The idea was so successful that he said people started sharing posts internationally about potholes that needed repair.
Mr. Booker now has 4.3 million followers on X and 3 million on Instagram.
Mr. Kennedy and his penchant for zingers also have earned a broad online reach, with 1.7 million followers on X, 2.3 million on Facebook and 1.3 million on Instagram.
He has 4.8 million likes on TikTok, making him the most-followed Republican senator.
Leslie Miller, who works in public policy at YouTube, says that platform alone contributed $60 billion to America’s gross domestic product last year and supported more than 540,000 jobs.
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