The government shutdown just claimed another victim: The White House announced Joe Biden won’t be coming to New Jersey on Friday to campaign for Cory Booker.
Of course, we’re not sure whether that helps or hurts Booker’s chances.
We feel the same way about the $1 million for TV ads that Booker’s counterpart across the Hudson, Mike Bloomberg, just pumped into the campaign.
After all, the last time Bloomberg “helped” his chosen candidates — in two recall elections in Colorado — the Bloomberg guys lost.
Booker entered this Senate election a 30-plus-point favorite, so it should be a cakewalk. But questions about his taxes, about stories he’s told that turn out to be fiction and about his tenure as mayor of Newark — where high taxes, crime and failing schools remain the reality — have cut Booker’s lead by more than half.
Give Steve Lonegan credit.
While Booker has painted him as a Tea Partying extremist, Lonegan has fought back. He runs tough ads. He held a press conference in front of a boarded up Newark house Booker once owned and is accused of having neglected. And Lonegan held his own in the debate.
Polls show Lonegan remains a long shot, but this is a good fight to have. We’d like to see Chris Christie use the next two weeks taking some of the political capital he enjoys from his own commanding lead in the governor’s race to bring home to New Jersey voters why they need to elect the first Republican to the Senate since 1972.
That would be good for Jersey, it would be good for Christie 2016 and it would be good for the low-tax, pro-growth message the GOP needs to bring to our bluest states.