By Chief Political Correspondent Michael Aron
NJ Today
As Cory Booker got endorsed by two statewide firefighter unions and the Newark union this morning, the buzz around him was that the Senate race is closer than people thought it would be nine days before the election.
A front-page New York Times story today said as much.
So does the fact that Booker’s TV ads are starting to go negative.
With the most recent polls showing his lead at 12 and 13 points, Booker dismisses any cause for concern.
“People are saying this is a tight race when we’re up double digits in the polls right now,” Booker said.
“Of course you all saw the New York Times article this morning,” Republican candidate Steve Lonegan said.
Lonegan quickly scheduled a news conference at his new Morris County headquarters to respond to Booker.
“This is a grassroots campaign, a grassroots campaign that has taken the gap between myself and my opponent from 35 points to 25 points to 12 points, and I will tell you right now, well within 10 points. We are on our way to victory on Oct. 16,” Lonegan said.
The Times article said that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is spending $1 million of his own to help Booker with a TV ad.
Booker was asked about Bloomberg’s independent expenditure ad.
“My opponent’s getting a lot of money from the right wing, from the Tea Party, from the gun lobby and I think this was Mayor Bloomberg’s answer to that,” Booker said.
“They’ve hit the panic button. They realize that these polls have closed, that their liberal standard-bearer is going down in flames,” Lonegan said. “Here is what I’m gonna do with Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s announcement. I’m going to use it to raise money from across the country. I’m gonna use it to raise money from people who are fed up with this type of effort by big special interests like Michael Bloomberg forcing his will on other states.”
The race has come down to each man painting the other as way out of the mainstream.
“He’s part of the Tea Party. He’s part of the extremes and he actually says very proudly, ‘I’m a right-wing radical,'” Booker said.
“The founding fathers of this nation were all called right-wing radicals,” said Lonegan.
A Booker insider says the campaign is still on track to win.
The Lonegan camp says it’s starting a TV ad buy tomorrow in New York almost as large as Booker’s.
“My opponent Cory Booker took this election for granted. He thought he was going to win on his celebrity status,” Lonegan said.
“We knew this was gonna be an election we have to earn. We’ve seen the polls, seen them ranging us from 10 to 15 points, but we still have a lot of work to do,” Booker said.
Booker picked up four newspaper endorsements this weekend, but the race is getting written up as one in which Lonegan’s aggressiveness has forced Booker to take Lonegan more seriously.