Cory Booker came to the second and final Senatorial debate prepared to portray Steve Lonegan as a Tea Party extremist, and Lonegan cooperated.
Lonegan came prepared with facts and punchlines. Booker turned nearly every question into an opportunity to portray himself as a compromiser who will go to Washington to get things done and Lonegan as an extremist.
Early on in this campaign, Lonegan acknowledged he “lacked a filter” between what he really thinks and what he says. He seems to have developed a filter over the last several weeks, but he left it at home tonight.
Lonegan’s hardest punchlines are likely to be used against him over the the final week of the campaign. “You might not be able to swim in that river, but its probably because of all the bodies in it from shooting victims” and “you’ll abort a baby in its 8th month of delivery,” will very likely be used relentlessly by the Booker campaign and they ramp up their Get Out The Vote machine in the coming week.
With more substantive answers, Lonegan probably won on debating points. But debating points don’t win elections. Both candidates were on message and their message was the same…Steve Lonegan is an antagonistic extremist. At least he was tonight.
If the Lonegan/Shaftan strategy was to gin up their base, I’m sure it worked. But it probably turned off moderate voters who were leaning towards coming out for Lonegan. Booker’s money will make sure Lonegan rhetoric gins up his base in the coming week.
Sarah Palin and Mark Levin are coming to New Jersey to campaign for Lonegan at a Tea Party event in New Egypt on Saturday. If you’re willing to bet on that as a winning strategy for a New Jersey election, you’re probably also willing to bet that the 0-5 Giants will have home field advantage at the Super Bowl in February.
If I were betting on the next Wednesday’s election, I’d take Booker and give 18 points.
The second and final debate between Newark Mayor Steve Lonegan and former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan, the major party candidates to complete the term of the late U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg, will take place this evening at 7PM.
The debate will be broadcast on NBC-TV, channel 4 in the New York market, channel 10 in the Philadelphia market, and livestreamed at nbcphiladelphia.com
GOP nominee for U.S. Senate Steve Lonegan is leading Democratic nominee Cory Booker among Independent voters, 50%-44%, and Republicans, 87%-10%, but women in all demographics are breaking strongly for Booker, 62%-31%, giving the Newark mayor an overall 12 point lead, 53%-41%, in the race to be New Jersey’s next U.S. Senator, according to a Quinnipiac poll of likely released this morning.
Booker’s lead is unchanged since a September 24 Quinnipiac poll that energized Lonegan supporters. The 12 point lead in September revealed the race to be a lot closer the 30%+ margins most were expecting for Booker.
The poll of 899 likely voters was conducted between October 5 and 7. If the Senatorial debate between the candidates moved the needle either way, it is not likely to be reflected in these numbers. The debate was held on the fourth, but not broadcast until the 6th.
There is some indication that Quinnipiac may be over weighting Democrats or under weighting Independents in their turnout assumptions. The poll indicates that NJ voters favor ObamaCare by a 51%-44% margin. Yet Independents oppose ObamaCare by 56%-38%. Democrats support ObamaCare, 92%-4%. Republicans oppose it 87%-8%. Lonegan has been campaigning against ObamaCare as strongly as he has been attacking Booker’s record in Newark.
In a general election, Independents are usually the largest percentage of voters. With Independents breaking for Lonegan and against ObamaCare, it is surprising that Democratic voters are predicted to carry the day. But nobody knows who will turnout for a Special Election on the third Wednesday in October.
Quinnipiac’s assumptions could be on the money. Democratic turnout in the August 13 primary was higher than expected by most.
The Lonegan campaign continues to believe the race is within three points. Strategist/pollster Rich Shaftan, who celebrated the Quinnipiac poll in September, posted the following critiques on facebook this morning:
Q-Poll is not a registered voter poll. It is a random digit dial survey where the results are weighted to the 2012 turnout model. They are weighting the numbers because they have too many Republicans completing the surveys and not enough Democrats. This the opposite of what happened in 2012, leading people to claim “the polls” were “skewed.” Pollsters should look at the raw data and not weight it for what they believe turnout will be.
Just spoke to Douglas Schwartz at the Quinnipiac Poll. He admitted to me they upweight African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians to match the 18+ Census Data. If he released the unweighted raw data it would show a 3 point race. And that doesn’t account for their sample being drawn from random phone numbers, instead of registered voters or better yet, registered voters who have voted in two of four general elections.
The man who outlawed the Big Gulp and french fries in New York City is spending $1 million to rescue Cory Booker from his burning campaign.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Independence USA PAC’s ad touting Booker as a senator who can get things done will start airing on television today, according to a New York Times piece, Anxious Allies Aiding Booker in Senate Bid.
Mr. Booker’s bumpy campaign and shrinking lead in the polls are all the more unsettling to Democratic Party officials because Mr. Lonegan is a political anomaly in the blue-hued state: a Tea Party conservative who describes himself as a “radical,” opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest, cheers the current shutdown of the federal government and has relied on polarizing right-wing figures like Sarah Palin and Rick Perry as campaign surrogates.
Mr. Lonegan, despite his ideological alignment, appears to have tapped into lingering doubts about whether Mr. Booker can translate his outsize, self-promotional persona, so popular with the Democratic base, into the rigors of a highly disciplined campaign.
Check in at SaveJersey or tune into How I Met Your Mothertonight if you want to see the ad. I’m not running it unless Bloomberg pays me.
During the U.S. Senatorial debate on Friday when Cory Booker and Steve Lonegan were calling each other extremists, Lonegan charged that Booker supports late term and partial birth abortions.
Booker countered, “I support, when it comes to a woman’s right to choose, the law of the land as it is right now.”
However, Booker told a different story to Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) a different story while seeking their endorsements to be New Jersey’s next U.S. Senator.
MMM has obtained an endorsement memo that Booker provided to Planned Parenthood and a completed questionnaire he provided NARAL. The documents were leaked a Google Group which has since been closed to public view.
TRENTON — Democrat Cory Booker and Republican Steve Lonegan repeatedly pegged each other as “extreme” during a heated U.S. Senate debate this afternoon. In the first of two televised debate between the candidates — who are running in New Jersey’…
In a column on RollCall yesterday, Washington pundit Stu Rothenberg chastised conservative websites that are excited about Steve Lonegan’s internal poll numbers suggesting his race to replace the late Senator Frank Lautenberg is in single digits.
“Watch the people who matter, not the folks who don’t,” Rothenberg wrote.
In New Jersey, Patrick Murray matters. The Executive Director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, Murray told Capitol Quickies’ Bob Jordon that the debates could be decisive.
If Cory Booker tries to give the impression he’s above all this, he might up end up being on the short end of the debate because that would play into the impression that people are starting to get, which is that Booker is not fully engaged in this campaign and that he’s looking ahead to his national career.’’
Lonegan and Booker debate first this afternoon at 1PM at ABC’s Trenton Bureau. The debate will be live streamed here and broadcast on 6ABC (Philadelphia market) on Sunday, October 6 at 9:30 am and on 7ABC in the New York market at 11am. Noticias Univision 41 will air the debate in Spanish on Friday, October 11 at 11pm.
The second and final debate between Booker and Lonegan will be on Wednesday, October 9 at Rowan University in Glassboro.
Last week the Quinnipiac poll had Cory Booker up in the U.S. Senate race by 12 points and the Monmouth poll had Booker up by 13.
Steve Lonegan’s strategist and pollster Rick Shaftan told SaveJersey that their campaign’s 4 day tracking internal poll has Lonegan down only 3 points, 47%-43%, with two weeks to go before the special election on Wednesday October 16.
In my years observing and participating in New Jersey politics, it’s been rare that an internal poll has proved more accurate than the normally reliable Monmouth or Quinnipiac polls. Adam Geller is the only partisan pollster who I would give more credence to than the best of the independents.
This time could be different. There is no historical model for predicting how voters will behave on the third Wednesday in October. There is also no model for predicting how voters still displaced by Superstorm Sandy will behave in the first non-primary election since their homes were destroyed. More then usual, the pollster’s assumptions and weighting impact the results.
Shaftan admits that his Democratic turnout assumptions are lower than what many others expect. He told MMM that he expects African-Americans will only be 8% of the vote in the senate elections compared to 12% in last year’s presidential election in New Jersey.
Releasing internal numbers that are substantially better than those produced by independent polls is a double edged sword. The release is intended to excite voters and to convince potential donors that their money won’t be wasted on a lost cause. On the downside, after the opposition scoffs at the numbers, they can react to them with their own ads or GOTV efforts.
TRENTON — Republican U.S. Senate candidate Steve Lonegan turned to churches and synagogues today to help get out the vote — and accused President Obama of suppressing religious freedom under the Affordable Care Act. Lonegan, a conservative activist…
Maybe Cory Booker’s internal polling numbers are similar to Steve Lonegan’s and show the U.S. Senate race closer than the independent polls indicate.
Booker is launching a negative ad against Steve Lonegan today, according to Politico.
Booker’s ad targets Lonegan.
Lonegan is still running against President Obama and ObamaCare.
With the Monmouth polls showing Booker’s support is shallow, that voters think that Booker is in it more for fame than service and that he’s a typical politician, Lonegan would be wise to focus on Booker’s weaknesses over the next two weeks.
