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It's been one of the biggest questions leading up to today's special election for US Senate, how many people would actually turn out to vote?

Good morning Free Republic and good morning to the GREAT STATE of NEW JERSEY! Get up and go to you polling place!! VOTE FOR STEVE LONEGAN TODAY!! And with that -- I am off to do my civic duty and to make America proud!! (hope this isn't a repeat thread!)

President Obama is reminding New Jersey voters to vote for Cory Booker in the state’s special Senate election Wednesday. Just one day before the election Obama appeared in a video for the Booker campaign encouraging New Jersey residents to support the popular Democratic Newark mayor. “Voters in New Jersey have the opportunity to vote for a leader with uncommon character, Cory Booker,” Obama said in the video.

ATLANTIC CITY — Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Cory Booker once again linked Republican opponent Steve Lonegan to the federal government shutdown today, suggesting some Republicans are playing politics with public safety. Booker, the mayor of Newark, stopped in Atlantic City where 51 firefighters will be laid off at the end of November due to local budget cuts. The city is hoping a federal grant may avert some of those layoffs, but its application is not being processed during the shutdown, according to union officials. “It could mean that some of the people behind me — or who are represented by...

Today’s U.S. Senate primary in New Jersey is – like so many elections these days – a representation of many of the most destructive trends that define modern politics. It is, for instance, a case of politics as a celebrity-driven coronation – one where one candidate’s media- and Twitter-driven celebrity (Cory Booker) is depicted as more important than other candidates’ far more impressive public policy experience. It is also a commentary on how such a celebrified politics tends to intensify when voters are paying the least attention. As the Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s Adam Green notes, this most certainly is...

Steve Lonegan has dedicated his time in public life to fighting for New Jersey taxpayers. When he became mayor of Bogota, NJ in 1996, Lonegan immediately cut municipal spending, eliminated wasteful and duplicative services, privatized some functions and instituted a more cost-efficient, user-friendly government. As a result, Bogota’s municipal spending remained constant for the entire 12 years of Steve’s tenure. He also kept debt and tax increases far below inflation despite massive state mandates and aid reductions to suburban towns like Bogota. Thanks to Steve’s strong, conservative leadership, Republicans kept council control for 11 straight elections, and Steve was reelected...

Filmmaker Joel Gilbert and investigative journalist Charles C. Johnson hit the streets of Newark to discover where Mayor Booker actually lives. His neighbor say he doesn't live there.

One police officer, who said his name was Officer Martinez, told us that 435 Hawthorne was Booker’s home but property records show that the home is owned by Ife Okocha. Cassandra Dock, a community activist critical of both Mayor Booker and Governor Christie, told us that the home on Hawthorne was actually a police station.

VIDEO ad: President Obama: Vote for Cory President Obama looked to shore up last-minute support for Newark Mayor Cory Booker with a new Web ad hailing the Democratic Senate candidate as the antidote to "the shutdown politics we've seen in Washington." The release of the video comes after a new poll showed Booker's lead tightening with just two days to go before the special election to replace deceased Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.). According to a Monmouth University survey, Booker leads Republican Steve Lonegan 52-42 percent, down three points from two weeks ago. The ad also comes after a weekend that...

Newark Mayor Cory Booker still holds a double-digit lead over his Republican challenger in the New Jersey Senate race, a new poll shows, but his lead continues to shrink with the election two days away. Booker leads Steve Lonegan by 10 points, 52 percent to 42 percent, among likely voters in a poll out Monday from Monmouth University. Continue Reading A separate poll last week had Booker up by 12, two weeks ago Monmouth had him up by 13 and over the summer by 16. In August, polls had Booker’s lead topping 24 percent. The poll also found Booker’s favorability...

There is a real battle going on in New Jersey. Governor Chris Christie set an early date of October 16 for a special election to fill the Senate seat of recently deceased Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ). The advantage rests with Democratic Newark, NJ Mayor Cory Booker. The Republican is Steve Lonegan, businessman and former mayor of Bogota, NJ. Christie endorsed Lonegan. Better than nothing, I guess. Booker, who has seen both unemployment and crime skyrocket during his administration, has the left fawning all over him nationwide because he is well-spoken, clean cut and black. Remind you of anyone? He is...

New Jersey is one of those states that somehow manages to be a caricature of itself: Big money. Big attitudes. Big politicians. Big problems. As the special election for U.S. Senate looms Wednesday, local conservatives are trying to pull out an unexpected win — or at least learn some big lessons — that could signal even bigger changes to come in a state now known as much for Chris Christie as for its liberal ideology. The Senate race is between the uber-popular and nationally recognized Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, and the lesser-known, Tea Party favorite, Steve Lonegan, mayor of...

As Cory Booker looks set to win the junior Senate seat in New Jersey Wednesday, his supposed neighbors in Newark say Mayor Booker doesn’t live in the Gateway City. Multiple residents of Newark told The Daily Caller that the longtime mayor doesn’t live at any of the addresses he has claimed as home. The mayor is believed to live in New York even though he is registered to run for New Jersey’s special senate election. Booker, who filed to run for the U.S. Senate from a B.O. Box in Newark, is registered to vote at 435 Hawthorne Avenue but his...

It’s going to be illuminating to see whether there is any backlash in New Jersey against news that Mayor Bloomberg of New York is scrambling to put an emergency $1 million into the floundering campaign of Mayor Cory Booker to succeed Senator Lautenberg. This news was injected Sunday by Michael Barbaro of the New York Times into a dispatch that ran on page one under the headline “Anxious Allies Aiding Booker In Senate Bid.” Mr. Bloomberg tried something similar in Colorado the other day, and Rocky Mountain voters promptly cashiered his two candidates out of the state’s Senate.

The lead had been as high as 35 points. But two new independent polls in the New Jersey special U.S. Senate race show Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s (D) lead shrinking to as little as 12 points over former mayor and Americans for Prosperity state director Steve Lonegan (R). Lonegan – a firebrand conservative and favorite of New Jersey’s tea party groups – has clawed his way back in the race thanks to some questionable decisions of the Booker campaign, the slight whiff of scandal surrounding Booker himself, and some brass knuckle campaigning of his own. The election is set for...

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Sarah Palin, former Republican vice presidential candidate and a prominent voice of the right, has endorsed New Jersey U.S. Senate candidate Steve Lonegan, his campaign announced Wednesday night. Palin's endorsement took aim at Newark Mayor Cory Booker, the Democratic candidate, who leads in polls. She said unemployment, taxes, and violent crime all have grown during Booker's term in office. "In fairness, [he] may not have noticed these facts between his constant tweeting and trips to Hollywood," Palin said in a statement released by the Lonegan campaign. She praised Lonegan for cutting taxes as mayor of Bogota and his work as...

Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s political star is losing some luster in the closing weeks of his bid for Senate in New Jersey, prompting the favored Democrat to step up attacks on his long-shot Republican opponent. Two consecutive polls of the race show Booker’s lead in the low double digits — down dramatically from late August and early September surveys that showed him leading former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan by between 25 and 35 points. A survey Tuesday by Monmouth University showed Booker with 53 percent support, compared to Lonegan’s 40 percent support among likely voters. Last week, a Quinnipiac survey...

Internal polling conducted by New Jersey senatorial candidate Steve Lonegan’s campaign and obtained by National Review Online shows Newark mayor Cory Booker’s lead slipping to six points, 48 to 42. A Quinnipiac poll released last week had Booker leading Lonegan by 12 points, and even that poll was considered a positive sign for Lonegan, as previous tallies showed Booker well running ahead of the former Bogota mayor by over 20 points. The latest internal numbers for Lonegan also show Booker’s negatives inching up. “Booker is 37-27 net favorable, a major shift from the 42-18 numbers he held two weeks ago,”...

Mayor Cory A. Booker has a high schooler’s affinity for Twitter, reveling in its ceaseless flow of affirmation and infinite space for self-promotion. But the occasional perils of his reliance on the social media service became evident on Wednesday when a 26-year-old stripper from Oregon revealed her private online correspondence with him. In a message to the stripper, named Lynsie Lee, Mr. Booker wrote that “the East Coast loves you, and by the East Coast, I mean me.”

<p>TRENTON -- A new poll finds the race for U.S. Senate in New Jersey has tightened.</p> <p>The Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday shows 53 percent back Democratic Newark Mayor Booker, while 41 percent support former Bogota Mayor Lonegan. The special election is scheduled for Oct. 16.</p>

A poll on the race to represent New Jersey in the U.S. Senate finds Newark Mayor Cory Booker 12 points ahead of conservative underdog Steve Lonegan with two weeks to go until the special election.

TRENTON — New Jersey's special U.S. Senate election is a little more than a month away, but for whom would you vote if the polls opened today: Cory Booker or Steve Lonegan? A Rutgers-Eagleton poll released today shows Booker, the Democratic mayor of Newark, leading Lonegan, the Republican candidate and a former Bogota mayor, by 35 points — 64 percent to 29 percent — heading into the Oct. 16 election. The two are running to fill the final 14 months of the term left vacant by the death of U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg.

Newark mayor Cory Booker has a very active imagination. Eliana Johnson demonstrated that with her report on Booker’s moving, highly detailed accounts of his involvement with “T-Bone,” a hard-luck drug dealer who Booker admitted to a friend is a fiction. So count us as a little skeptical about heart-wrenching stories told by Cory Booker that happen to serve his rhetorical purposes. That is why Eliana has gotten interested in the case of Wazn Miller. In the sort of tragedy all too common in our cities, Miller was gunned down in Newark in 2004 in a murder that has never been...

Poverty in New Jersey continued to grow even as the national recession lifted, reaching a 52-year high in 2011, according to a report released today. The annual survey by Legal Services of New Jersey found 24.7 percent of the state’s population — 2.1 million residents — was considered poor in 2011. That’s a jump of more than 80,000 people — nearly 1 percent higher than the previous year and 3.8 percent more than pre-recession levels. "This is not just a one-year or five-year or 10-year variation," said Melville D. Miller Jr., the president of LSNJ, which gives free legal help...

Amazing video of this woman spelling out what is going on and what one of the anointed ones has done and will do, when he gets to the US Senate. The parallels to that guy from Chicago are amazing.

Dear Patriots. Though apprehensive upon hearing Obama tell Joe the Plumber that he wanted to spread the wealth around, I understand America’s extremely emotional response to electing its first black president. White America naively thought, finally, we can never be called a racist nation again. My 100 year old black grandmother wept. Never in her wildest dreams could she imagine a colored man sitting in the president’s chair in the Oval Office. But little did America realize that the beautiful articulate shiny golden black man that they opened the gates of our country and housed in the White House was...

The list of keynote commencement speakers at Ivy League institutions for 2013 does not include a single conservative, a recent study authored by the conservative Young America’s Foundation (YAF) found. Instead seven of the elite schools opted to invite ideological liberal speakers such as media billionaire Oprah Winfrey, Vice President Joe Biden (D), Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D), Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I), among others. Only Brown University, which chooses a commencement keynote from among its students, did not have a 2013 speaker who is generally associated with the left. YAF spokesman Adam Tragone told Campus Reform on Tuesday the list...

<p>NEWARK, N.J.--More than 30 million passengers a year pass through the international airport here, but few spend any time in the gloomy city. But there are interesting political stirrings in Newark, whose mayor, 66-year-old Sharpe James, heads an old-fashioned political machine. In his bid for a fifth term, Mr. James faces a serious challenge from fellow Democrat Cory Booker, a reform-minded city councilman who has collected campaign contributions from figures as diverse as Bill Bradley and Jack Kemp.</p>

NBC's Andrea Mitchell says the media has given Mitt Romney a "free ride" by not dwelling on how long it took for his former primary rivals to formally endorse him. Mitchell says the media has always laid off of examining Romney's record and the clash between the elements that make up the Republican party. "They believe that the Bain Capital record is their best argument against Mitt Romney," NBC's Andrea Mitchell said about the Obama campaign. "What you pointed out in your opening segment, and the lead in to the Cory Booker interview, was that the media have not really...

A furious Chris Matthews on Monday railed against Cory Booker for his "betrayal" and "sabotage" of fellow Democrat Barack Obama. A bewildered Matthews couldn't understand why the Newark mayor would "trash" the President. Howling over Booker's break from party loyalty, Matthews snarled, "... I think [this] was an act of sabotage. Whatever the intention was, [Booker] was trashing the entire Obama campaign of the summer." The Hardball host then played a clip of Obama "trying to defend himself against what looked like something like a betrayal." [MP3 audio here.] Talking to liberals David Corn and Howard Fineman, Matthews attempted to...

Campaign 2012: Newark's mayor succumbs to administration thought control after going off-script and praising the private-equity firm that succeeded in creating net jobs, unlike presidential investment Solyndra. The White House must have had a bad case of the vapors when Newark Mayor Cory Booker, viewed in some quarters as a practical, non-ideological problem-solver, praised the record of Mitt Romney's former private firm Bain Capital, before a national audience on NBC's "Meet The Press," and eschewed attacks of a type he found "nauseating." "I have to just say from a very personal level, I'm not about to sit here and indict...

That didn't take long. Dem Mayor Cory Booker said this morning on Meet the Press: The Obama ad against Romney is ‘nauseating.’ Bain Capital ‘has done a lot’ to support and grow business. “Stop attacking private equity!”.....Booker tonight: Romney’s years at Bain are fair game. “I encourage” the Obama campaign “to examine that record and discuss it” (Video)

NEWARK — Newark Mayor Cory Booker was taken to a hospital tonight for treatment of smoke inhalation he suffered trying to rescue his next-door neighbors from their burning house. "I just grabbed her and whipped her out of the bed," Booker said in recounting the fire. Booker told The Star-Ledger he also suffered second-degree burns on his hand. The fire started in a two-story building on Hawthorne Avenue in the Upper Clinton Hill neighborhood, shortly before the mayor arrived home after a television interview with News 12 New Jersey. Five people were taken to the hospital for treatment: the mayor,...

Mayor Cory A. Booker of Newark carried a woman out of a burning house and was treated for smoke inhalation on Thursday night. Mr. Booker arrived to his home in the Upper Clinton Hill neighborhood to find a neighbor’s house on fire, said Anne Torres, a spokeswoman. The Fire Department had not yet arrived, she said, and Mr. Booker went inside with two members of his security detail and rescued one woman. The mayor was treated at a hospital and released at 11:30 p.m. “Everyone is O.K.,” Ms. Torres wrote in an e-mail. < snip > The mayor told The...

The Mayor of Newark, New Jersey is making an offer he hopes city residents cannot refuse -- report your gun-owning neighbor, get $1,000. In a video, Mayor Cory Booker holds ten $100 bills as he explains how the new program works. People just have to anonymously call a number to report someone with an illegal gun and they get the dough. Here is the video:

Newark Mayor Cory Booker yesterday outlined a series of measures designed to monitor the flow of guns in and out of the state's largest city and to prevent gun dealers from opening shop in residential neighborhoods or near schools. Booker, joined by Gov. Jon Corzine and Attorney General Anne Milgram at a news conference yesterday afternoon, admitted the initiatives may not stop the bloodshed overnight, but called them necessary steps in order to curtail violence. The announcement comes nearly two weeks after four college-age Newark residents were shot in the head behind an elementary school in the Ivy Hill neighborhood....

New Jersey has the fifth highest number of AIDS cases in America, and yesterday became the last state to allow intravenous drug users to get clean needles, hoping it will slow the spread of the deadly virus. Gov. Jon Corzine ended a 13-year stalemate by signing a law to permit six communities to host needle exchange sites, where clean syringes and referrals to drug treatment will be available. The bill includes $10 million for drug treatment and counseling programs. "This is an historic day for public health," Corzine said, calling the law "a potential bridge to hope for addicts." After...

Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker's approach to addressing the needs of his community differs from that of his predecessors. How does Booker tackle the challenges facing his constituents? He experiences them for himself. Just three months ago, Booker became the first new mayor of Newark in two decades after the previous mayor, Sharpe James, dropped out of the mayoral race on March 27. Seventy-two percent of Newark voters favored Booker, reflecting the community's desire for change. And Booker is on the move. In 1998, he moved to Brick Towers, a public-housing project in Newark's Central Ward. Booker, who grew up...

Newark Mayor Cory Booker tossed off his jacket and gave chase when he saw a police officer with gun drawn chasing a robbery suspect on Thursday. The mayor's security detail tackled Altarig Rahman. Rahman was charged with aggravated assault and strong-armed robbery. Police said Rahman had robbed the mother of the city's fire director at a bank across from City Hall. The woman was depositing money for the Essex County courts parking lot, where she is a supervising attendant. Alex Garcia, a restaurant manager who was in the bank, was the first to pursue the suspect. The suspect managed to...

<p>With 10 days before the Newark mayoral election, a new WABC-TV Eyewitness News/SurveyUSA poll shows that Mayor Sharpe James and challenger Cory Booker are still even but the electorate is becoming more divided along racial lines.</p> <p>"We are seeing a polarization in the electorate. Whites and Hispanics are moving toward Booker. African-Americans are consolidating their support for James," said Jay Leve, editor of Verona-based SurveyUSA.</p>

Newark Mayor Cory Booker made a statement on HBO's Real Time Friday that should please gun rights advocates across the fruited plain. Despite being for stronger gun laws, Booker said, "Legal gun buyers are not causing murders in Newark and Chicago and other places" … CORY BOOKER, NEWARK MAYOR (D-N.J.): To me, the data should drive our decision making. So I know, I’m not afraid of people having guns who are law abiding citizens. In the analysis of gun murders and shootings in my city, I could only find one in the entire time I’ve been mayor...The guns that are...

Go back and listen to Cory Booker’s stump speeches over the years, and, as in those of any politician, you’ll hear many of the same stories. But Booker’s are more dramatic and heart-rending than most. They draw heavily on his experiences in Newark, N.J., where he moved in 1995 after his second year at Yale Law School. They have also helped to make him a political celebrity and put millions of dollars into his campaign war chest and Newark’s coffers. Booker’s tales of his trials and travails on the streets of Newark, the city that twice elected him mayor, are...

As he prepares to run for the U.S. Senate, Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker is having to answer questions about his sexuality, and according to Gawker, he isn't doing a very good job. Presumably because he has mostly remained unattached throughout his time as mayor, with no publicly known wife prospects, whispers of Booker's sexuality have been swirling around him for years now. But with the high profile that would come with being a senator, the whispers may become yells for answers -- Gawker seems determined to start the rallying cry. Newark Mayor and U.S. Senate hopeful Cory Booker is...

Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker loves telling stories about the people who inspired him to run for office and help others.Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker. (Getty Images) However, according to National Review Online, one of his most famous inspirations, a Newark “drug lord” by the name of T-Bone, may be a “composite” of several different people.Translation: T-Bone may be the product of Booker’s imagination.

The problem of poverty now can be equated to racial injustices at the time of the March on Washington 50 years ago, Newark Mayor Cory Booker said Sunday. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders were fighting against issues like income inequality as well as racial inequality, the Democrat said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "Something clearly I learned from the generation before me and the civil rights movement is that the power of the people is greater than the people in power," said Booker, who's running for Senate in New Jersey. "The challenge I often see in...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has endorsed fellow Republican Steve Lonegan in his bid for the U.S. Senate — but on Saturday, Lonegan threw his support to Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul in his contentious war of words with the outspoken governor. During an appearance on MSNBC's "Up with Steve Kornacki," Lonegan praised Christie as a "strong leader," but said he disagrees with the state executive on issues including recovery funds for Hurricane Sandy. "I disagree with Gov. Christie and President Obama on Hurricane Sandy funding," he said. "I thought it was over the top. I thought it was too much...

NEWARK, NJ, August 19, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The 45 pastors who endorsed pro-abortion Senate candidate Cory Booker are “bringing confusion and doubt to their congregants about the priority of God's Word,” according to one of the state's leading black evangelical pro-life leaders. “Corey Booker supports homosexual marriages,” Rev. Clenard Childress Jr., the founder of BlackGenocide.org, said. “Cory Booker supports abortion killing, or womb lynching.” Rev. Clenard H. Childress Jr. Rev. Clenard H. Childress Jr. The Newark mayor's socially liberal policies did not stop 45 pastors from endorsing him on August 6 at the city's Metropolitan Baptist Church. “People are returning...

Gov. Chris Christie today delivered a strong endorsement of Republican Steve Lonegan, a former rival, for the U.S. Senate special election in October. Despite the fiery attacks the two have traded over the years, Christie pledged to help Lonegan on the fundraising circuit, on the stump, and by deploying two of his top surrogates on the campaign trail: Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno and interim U.S. Sen. Jeffrey Chiesa (R-N.J.), who is slated to endorse Lonegan on Wednesday. "We still have too many people across America who have too much government in too much of their lives," Christie told a jam-packed...

Gov. Chris Christie today will endorse Republican candidate Steve Lonegan, his former rival, for the U.S. Senate special election in October. Christie, who is running for re-election this year in the gubernatorial race, will appear with Lonegan today at the headquarters of the Hunterdon County Republican Committee to make his endorsement at 4 p.m. U.S. Sen. Jeffrey Chiesa (R-N.J.), Christie's pick to fill the seat temporarily after Sen. Frank Lautenberg's death in June, is slated to endorse Lonegan on Wednesday. The Christie endorsement -- coveted by GOP politicos across the country, including presidential candidate Mitt Romney last year -- marks...