Opponents in New Jersey Senate Race Struggle to Match Booker’s Star Power
By KATE ZERNIKE
PATERSON, N.J. — Were this a typical campaign, any of the candidates would be a strong contender to represent New Jersey in the United States Senate. There is the State Assembly speaker who has worked her way up through local politics and would be the first woman as well as the first African-American to represent the state in the Senate. The 13-term congressman endorsed as a “workhorse” by the family of the senator whose death opened up the seat. The eight-term congressman who has served on the House Intelligence Committee, in addition to being a nuclear physicist and a five-time “Jeopardy!” champion.
But in a short campaign in the thick of summer, all three have struggled to match the star power of someone with a less lofty title but a far better known political brand:
Cory A. Booker, the mayor of Newark.
With just days until the Democratic primary in a special election to fill the Senate seat left open by the death of Frank R. Lautenberg in June, the frustration of the not-Booker candidates has bubbled over into complaints about being overlooked. But even as they tried to get voters and the news media to think about someone other than Mr. Booker, the candidates themselves kept coming back to Mr. Booker.
Campaigning here on Tuesday, Representative
Frank Pallone Jr., who is in his 13th term, said he “resented” Mr. Booker for accusing him of having too much experience in Congress, calling the argument “nonsense.”
At another appearance, Sheila Y. Oliver, the Assembly speaker, sharply criticized the mayor’s tenure in Newark, saying that Mr. Booker’s national travel had left the city’s residents feeling ignored and that he was running for Senate to serve his ambitions for higher office, not the state.
And Representative
Rush D. ****, the nuclear physicist, accused the mayor of adopting a strategy that is long on smiling and short on substance, calling him “a master at empty rhetoric.”
“The voters, the citizens, deserve a campaign that helps them think about their future and shows them the choice they have,” Mr. **** said in an interview. “I don’t think a campaign where one candidate is coronated before the race even begins helps that.”
Mr. Booker, meanwhile, has mostly sidestepped the critiques — even skipping some debates — portraying himself as a fresh face who can work with Republicans as well as Democrats to get things done. But he has occasionally offered his own barbs. At the first debate he attended, on Monday night, he was the first to criticize another candidate, noting that Mr. **** and Mr. Pallone together have more than 40 years of experience in Congress: “If you want that kind of Washington experience, you should vote for them.”
Mr. Booker’s advantages are considerable. He has raised far more money than the other candidates, pulling in $2.1 million in the last month alone. And he has been
endorsed by the state’s major newspapers, as well as The New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He leads by wide margins in the polls — though election officials are predicting record-low turnout, making the outcome harder to predict.
Democrats outnumber Republicans by about 700,000 among registered voters in the state, and New Jersey has not elected a Republican to the Senate in four decades, so the winner of the primary on Tuesday will enter the general election in October heavily favored. The front-runner to win the Republican primary, Steven M. Lonegan, a former mayor of Bogota, lost his last bid for office.
So Mr. Pallone, Mr. **** and Ms. Oliver have promoted their own records while leveling increasingly pointed criticism at Mr. Booker — often returning to the theme that his support of
charter schools, his ties to Wall Street and his friendship with Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, make him insufficiently Democratic.
As Mr. Pallone came to this struggling old mill city to kick off the last week before the primary on Tuesday, the intended symbolism was clear. Senator Lautenberg, whose family has endorsed Mr. Pallone, was born here, and a banner thanking him was still draped on a nearby school.
Mr. Lautenberg’s dislike of Mr. Booker was well known; at 89, he fought against retiring because he did not want the mayor to take his seat. His son, Joshua, stood alongside Mr. Pallone here this week and argued that he would be stronger than Mr. Booker on gun control and “standing up to corporations” — issues that defined his father’s five terms representing the state. He accused him of being in the pocket of Wall Street and of wanting to “sell our kids and our schools out to the highest bidder” for his support of vouchers.
“I resent the constant references by Mayor Booker to ‘Congress can’t get anything done,’ ” Mr. Pallone said. “There are people in Congress who have been able to get things done,” he said, citing the
health care overhaul, which he helped to write. “That alone shows you that Congress can do great things if you work with your colleagues. The idea that people in Congress, people with experience, can’t get things done, that’s nonsense.”
In his television ads and in the debate, Mr. **** has started out by noting that he is not Mr. Booker, going on to argue that he is the true “progressive” and the most qualified candidate.
“It’s the elephant in the room,” Mr. **** said. “Everyone’s heard of Cory Booker. I needed to make the point that yes, but that doesn’t qualify him for the Senate. I tell voters, I want you to have the kind of choice that I think you want and should have, which is a choice based on your future, not the candidate’s future. A choice based on issues, not rhetoric or celebrity, that deals with substance.”
Mr. **** plays up the contrast at campaign stops, asking voters: “Wouldn’t it be nice to have at least one scientist in the United States Senate?”
Ms. Oliver, meanwhile, has argued that it is wrong for the state not to have any women in its Congressional delegation.
Speaking to reporters as she cast her mail-in ballot this week, she repeated the common criticism of Mr. Booker’s tenure in Newark, and recalled the Democratic National Convention last year, where members of the New Jersey delegation were treated to a blitz of publicity from him: fliers slid under their doors at night, complimentary newspapers, a tote bag full of Newark products and a rock with one of his favorite quotations.
“The mayor certainly had his trajectory focused and he had been planning for a long time,” she said. “He is a front-runner for that reason.”
