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Cory Booker Survives Lonegan’s Attacks to Win Solidly Blue New Jersey Senate Seat

Mayor of Newark Cory Booker won a special election Wednesday to become the new junior Senator from the reliably blue state of New Jersey.

The Senator elect is considered a rising star in the Democratic Party, and has been touted as a future Presidential contender. The Senate seat will allow Booker to expand his national profile with powerful media backing.

Booker defeated his Republican opponent Steve Lonegan, the former Mayor of Bogota, who ran on a conservative platform. Lonegan relentlessly closed the gap in the polls through skillful debate and campaign performances, but was outspent 1-to-8 in the well-financed opinion molding media blitz by the Democrat.

With almost 100% precincts reporting, Booker registered 55 percent voting lead to Lonegan’s 44 percent. The twitter addict exulted triumphantly with thousands of people re-tweeting his first reaction:


Three hours later in another tweet, the Senator elect sounded philosophical:

In a speech to his supporters, Booker added, “That’s why I’m going to Washington — to take back that sense of pride. Not to play shallow politics that’s used to attack and divide but to engage in the kind of hard, humble service that reaches out to others.”

Booker grew up in New Jersey as the child of IBM executives, and studied at Stanford and Yale, before being selected as a Rhodes Scholar. According to Booker, his father who died at age 76 last week, instilled the values of love and hard work in him at an early age. He intends to carry these values to the Senate.

The Senator elect has a twitter following of 1.4 million – five times the population of Newark – although half of those accounts appear to be fake or inactive.

Booker will complete the remaining 15 months of Frank Lautenberg’s term, who was 89 when he died in June. He will then have to be on ballot again in November 2014, for a full 6-year term.

The Republican contender Lonegan, after two runs in gubernatorial primaries, took on the challenge to win the Senate seat for his party which has been almost totally annihilated in North-East. Lonegan had previously campaigned as an anti-tax, pro-growth crusader, and even tried to make English as the official language of Bogota city.

Throughout the campaign, Lonegan hammered Booker on his record, including appalling level of homicide rates in Newark, criticizing Booker’s excessive soliciting of celebrities in California and New York, declaring that “New Jersey needs a leader, not a tweeter.”

Lonegan also brought up Booker’s twitter flirting with a Portland, Oregon stripper with stage name Lynsie Lee, revealing a not so palatable side of the popular Democrat.

Lynsie had this to say about sexual hypocrisy after Cory’s election victory:

With seven out of eight leading TV channels including CNN, NBC, CBS and PBS solidly cheer leading for Democrats, and FOX news aggressively backing neo-Conservatives, conservatives are helpless without a powerful megaphone to air their side of the story to a national audience. And this may be the principal reason why Lonegan was defeated.

[image from youtube]