Decision Day in NJ's Accelerated U.S. Senate Race

By ANGELA DELLI SANTI
Associated Press
TRENTON, N.J.
In a race for U.S. Senate that that touched upon a candidate’s tweets with a stripper and a political strategist’s profanity-laced rant, perhaps it’s only fitting that the outcome will be decided on a Wednesday in October.

The two-month campaign in New Jersey between Democrat Cory Booker and Republican Steve Lonegan ends amid a lingering federal government shutdown, underscoring the different approaches each would take as a senator.

Booker, Newark’s high-profile mayor, circulated a petition to end the shutdown and accused Congress of failing voters by not finding a way to work together.

Lonegan supports the shutdown, arguing that the Affordable Healthcare Act should be delayed a year and objecting to the concept of government-directed health insurance.

The campaign has played out under a compressed schedule for the seat held by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a liberal Democrat, until his death in June.

Republican Gov. Chris Christie appointed a GOP caretaker and ordered the election held Oct. 16, the soonest date the law allowed following an unprecedented August primary.

Critics accused the governor of keeping the race off the Nov. 5 ballot, when he is up for re-election, to make it easier for him to win big as a Republican in a Democratic-leaning state and aid his potential national ambitions. During his first debate, he refused to rule out a run for president in 2016.

Public opinion polls showed Booker, 44, the second-term mayor of Newark, with a double-digit advantage heading into the election, where he hoped to secure a seat as the second African-American in the Senate along with Republican Tim Scott of South Carolina.

Lonegan, 57, the former state director of Americans for Prosperity, a group advocating limited government that was founded by the billionaire Koch brothers, ran an aggressive, in-your-face campaign.

Both candidates drew on some big names for support _ Oprah Winfrey helped raise funds for Booker, while the nation’s largest tea party political action committee brought former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in to campaign for the GOP nominee.

The campaign took odd twists and turns for both candidates.

Booker was forced off-message to explain G-rated correspondence with a stripper he met while filming a social media documentary. Lonegan was forced to dump a long-time strategist after a lengthy, profanity-laced interview with a political web site in which he claimed Booker’s banter with the stripper “was like what a gay guy would say.”

While in Newark, Booker has worked with Christie on common education goals, such as ending lifetime teacher tenure and increasing the number of charter schools. Newark schools remain under state control.

Lonegan repeatedly knocked Booker for the city’s high crime rate and unemployment. At one point in the campaign Booker announced a new crime-fighting strategy to cope with a string of 10 homicides in 10 days.

Lonegan, the onetime mayor of small-town Bogota in Bergen County, said he, too, has reached across the aisle in working with a Democratic borough council.

But Booker painted him as a tea party extremist, one who would _ if sent to Washington _ make the capital’s gridlock worse.