Politics

Of Course Cory Booker Won the New Jersey Senate Primary

Newark Mayor Cory Booker won the New Jersey primary elections to become the Democratic nominee for the Senate on Tuesday, meaning that Cory Booker is now the huge favorite to become the next senator for the state.

By Abby Ohlheiser
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Newark Mayor Cory Booker won the New Jersey primary elections to become the Democratic nominee for the Senate on Tuesday, meaning that Cory Booker is now the huge favorite to become the next senator for the state. The special elections will fill the seat left vacant by the late Senator Frank Lautenberg for the rest of his term. Booker will now face conservative GOP candidate Steve Lonegan (the winner of today's Republican primary), who is now the underdog in the final elections for the seat — New Jersey has 700,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans, for one thing. Plus, the state overwhelmingly elects Democrats to the Senate. The mayor is obviously tweeting a whole bunch about his victory:

The AP called the Democratic race for Booker just 45 minutes after the polls closed (due probably in part to low turnout — come on, it's the middle of August, and it was raining today). They gave him just over 56 percent of the Democratic vote by their count. He beat out Democrats Rep. Frank Pallone and Rep. Rush Holt for the nomination, despite the Lautenberg family's endorsement of Pallone over Booker.

Even though Booker has the Oprah endorsement, not all is well in his world right now. Just before the primaries, the mayor came under increasing scrutiny for his role in the troubled Waywire videosharing startup. And then, as the Atlantic Wire explained earlier today, liberals began to turn, hard, on the usually media-friendly candidate. But realistically, neither of those things have factored into his candidacy as a real risk to his success at this point.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.