Daily Caller Tries To Tilt A Second NJ Senate Election

The conservative website that broke the “news” of Senator Bob Menendez cavorting with underage Dominican prostitutes on the eve of last year’s election between the Democratic U.S Senator and State Senator Joe Kyrillos published a story this morning alleging that Cory Booker does not live in Newark.

Accompanied by a video by Highway 61 Entertainment, a firm that also produced a documentary that makes the case that President Obama’s real father was socialist Franklin Marshal Davis, not Barack Obama, Sr., today’s story alleges that Booker lives in New York and that his Newark properties house the mayor’s security detail from the Newark PD.

Last year’s story about Menendez was widely debunked as poorly sourced, relying on anonymous videos of the Dominican escorts who later recanted.  The story did not get any legs until after the election which was held seven days after Superstorm Sandy hit New Jersey.

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Monmouth Poll: Booker’s Lead Shrinks To 10%

It’s two days before New Jersey elects a U.S. Senator to replace the late Frank Lautenberg in Washington and Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s lead over former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan has shrunk to 10%, according to a poll released by Monmouth University this morning.  Democrat Booker led Republican Lonegan by 13% two weeks ago and by 26% in August.

Polling Director Patrick Murray surveyed 1,393 likely voters who have voted in at least two of the last four general elections between Thursday and Saturday of last week.   The poll has a margin of error of +/- 2.6%.

The poll results are weighted with the assumptions that Democrats will be 38% of the turnout, Independents 34% and Republicans 28%. Monmouth expects that women will be 52% of the turnout.  The expected racial demographic of voters is 75% White, 12% Black, 8% Hispanic and 5% Asian/Other.

Democrats favor Booker by a margin of 90%-6%.  Independents favor Lonegan, 48%-43% with 6% undecided.  Republicans favor Lonegan 86%-11%.

55% of respondents said that Booker’s views on issues are generally in line with most of New Jerseyans.  30% said Booker is out of step with most voters and 15% are not sure. 48% said Booker is more interested in being on the national stage than he is in serving the people of New Jersey.  This perception accounts for Booker’s weakened support, according to Murray.

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Where Cory Booker and Steve Lonegan stand on the issues

Where Cory Booker and Steve Lonegan stand on the issues (via NJ.com)

Democrat Cory Booker and Republican Steve Lonegan are about as far apart ideologically as you can get. Here’s where they stand on the major issues, drawn from their own words. The economy Booker: Supports raising the minimum wage to $10.10 and investing…

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Cary Booker, father of Newark Mayor Cory Booker, dead at 76

Cary Booker, father of Newark Mayor Cory Booker, dead at 76 (via NJ.com)

NEWARK — Cary Booker, the father of Newark Mayor Cory Booker, died Thursday after a long bout with Parkinson’s disease, the mayor’s Senate campaign said. He was 76. Cary Booker recently suffered a stroke and died in Las Vegas, where he was living…

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Too Many Empty Suits

By Matt Rooney, SaveJersey.com

If you watched last night’s final #njsen debate, Save Jerseyans, then you heard Cory Booker (D-Twitter) use the word “tea party” more often than his opponent’s name.

Booker is a lot of things but “stupid” isn’t one of them. He came to play this time after flubbing the first debate. and reading plenty of polls which suggest that both the Tea Party and the ongoing federal shutdown are losers for Steve Lonegan. His buddy (and occasional bully) Barack Obama shared a similar experience in 2012. Plenty of smart people think Booker carried the day (and probably the election along with it). And they might be right.

What stuck in my crawl was Booker’s dogged insistence that people like Steve Lonegan are the problem in Washington.

It’s a crock, folks.

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What were they thinking?

Ben Dworkin, Director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics, introduces U.S. Senate candidate Steve Lonegan. September 24, 2013

I don’t think Steve Lonegan and Rick Shaftan are stupid.

I don’t think they believed their own bs over the years that a “true conservative” could win a statewide election in New Jersey, if only given a chance.

Surprisingly to many, Lonegan’s campaign since August was working.  He substantially narrowed the gap between himself and Cory Booker.  He unquestionably weakened the electorate’s perception of Booker.  Lonegan never moderated his message, but he significantly moderated his delivery and demeanor.  He was not a scary angry conservative.

The Lonegan I witnessed at Rider University’s Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics last month was not a flame thrower.  He was an honest and concerned adult sharing his wisdom with college students.

I never got to the point where I thought Lonegan would win next week.  I did think that if he got into single digits, he would be the front runner for a rematch with Booker in 2014.   I thought, if he kept doing what he was doing, in the style he was doing it, his best shot at beating Booker was in November of 2014.

I don’t think that anymore.  With tonight’s debate performance, combined with scheduled appearances with Sarah Palin and Mark Levin this weekend, I think Lonegan and Shaftan concluded they aren’t going to win, so they might as well have fun for the last week of Lonegan’s political career.

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Booker wins on style

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.

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Booker-Lonegan, Round 2

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

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Quinnipiac Poll: Women will put Booker of the top

Lonegan camp says its a 3 point race

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.

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Biden Bails On Booker

Vice President Joe Biden cancelled his trip to New Jersey to campaign for Cory Booker’s Senate campaign, according to reports on PolitickerNJ and Politico.

Biden’s office said he cancelled the trip because of the government shutdown.

But, Politico reports that even if Biden wanted to work on reopening the government, Senate Majority Leader Harry Read has insisted that Biden not be involved in any negotiations.

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