"I need street names and patience," Cory Booker told one worried tweeter as up to 80 centimeters of snow trapped many New Jersey residents in their homes.
An avalanche of responses followed, many of which Booker answered with personal house calls, shovel in hand. His Twitter feed, #CoryBooker, reads like a real-time history of one man's struggle to free his city from the snow.
News that makes sense
Your trusted source for staying up-to-date with the world around you. Get free daily news updates and analysis, straight to your inbox.
"I'm on my way to Treamont Ave now to help dig your mom out," one of Booker's tweets says, while news clips show the rising star in the Democratic Party working tirelessly to clear pavements, dig out vehicles and rescue stricken citizens.
When #Babihead tweets "still has yet to clean my street & I live across from hospital!," Booker responded: "Sending team immediately back there 2 ensure hospital is clear."
"Plez help my dad he's snowed in at home & i cant get to him from NY," says another tweeter, using the abbreviations and minimal punctuation that have become the hallmark of the rabidly popular microblogging site.
Responding like some new media hero, Booker replies: "Please DM (direct message) me his # and address. I will try & help."
"I need my block plow, mines is North 13th Street," writes another resident. "We got it earlier - but I know it needs more attention. Please be patient," comes the reassuring reply.
His very personal campaign comes in stark contrast to the much criticized efforts of other top officials including New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who went on a Disney World vacation in Florida despite the impending storm.
But Booker, 41, sticks up for New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was copping the most flak after the Big Apple struggled to clear the massive snow falls and reports emerged of ambulances failing to reach critical patients.
"People far 2 rough on @mikebloomberg - still fighting 2 clear snow in NWK & we are 1/29th size of NYC," he writes.
Booker, who was educated at Stanford, Yale and Britain's prestigious Oxford University and has been compared by some to Barack Obama before he assumed the US presidency, has more than a million followers on Twitter.
Follow us on:
