Newark’s Cory Booker Prepares for 2014 Senate Race

In an apparent attempt to elbow aging incumbent Frank R. Lautenberg aside, Newark Mayor Cory Booker quietly took his first step toward a possible 2014 U.S. Senate candidacy earlier this week.

Booker, who recently balked at an opportunity to challenge popular GOP Gov. Chris Christie this November, filed paperwork for Lautenberg’s seat with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Tuesday.

Booker, 43, announced last month that he planned to explore a possible Senate candidacy instead of running for governor of New Jersey.  After toying with a possible gubernatorial candidacy throughout much of the fall, Booker’s decision to forego the governor’s race left New Jersey Democrats scrambling to find a well-known challenger to the increasingly popular Christie, whose approval rating skyrocketed after Hurricane Sandy, particularly among Democrats. 

Booker’s bold move in filing Senate paperwork with the FEC immediately drew the ire of a top Lautenberg aide, who denounced the ambitious Newark mayor as “self-absorbed and disrespectful” in an interview with Politico.

“It’s shameful that he avoided challenging a Republican just so that he can take on a long-serving, loyal Democrat,” said the aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

A recent poll conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University showed the popular Newark mayor with a 22-point lead over Lautenberg among self-identified Democratic voters and Democratic-leaning independents.

Despite his advanced age, it might be a bit too early to count Lautenberg out.  He’s as scrappy as they come and enjoys a good fight.

A self-made millionaire, Lautenberg was initially elected to the U.S. Senate in 1982 after winning a crowded Democratic primary and narrowly defeating popular Republican congresswoman Millicent Fenwick, an aristocratically eccentric, pipe-smoking former fashion editor and grandmother first elected to Congress at the age of 64, in the general election.

Considered one of the most liberal members of the Senate and one of its strongest gun control proponents, the 88-year-old Lautenberg was reelected twice — defeating Wall Street executive Pete Dawkins, a retired brigadier general and Heisman Trophy winner, in 1988 and staving off a spirited challenge from the GOP Speaker of the Assembly during the national Republican tidal wave of 1994 — before announcing his retirement in 2000.

Lautenberg, the son of impoverished Jewish immigrants, was called out of retirement less than two years later when he replaced scandal-plagued Sen. Robert Torricelli on the Democratic ticket. Though he was forced to throw together a last-minute campaign operation from scratch, Lautenberg celebrated his return to politics by trouncing the GOP’s Doug Forrester — a political neophyte back then — by nearly 210,000 votes.

An unabashed critic of the Bush Administration and particularly Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy, Lautenberg survived a primary challenge from longtime U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews before thrashing former Republican congressman Dick Zimmer by nearly a half-million votes to win a fifth, nonconsecutive term in 2008.

In addition to Booker, who is in his second term as mayor of the state’s largest and second-most racially diverse city, several other Democrats are reportedly eyeing Lautenberg’s seat, including thirteen-term U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr., who has been quietly contacting party leaders in anticipation that Lautenberg won’t run again.  Stephen M. Sweeney, the State Senate president, and Assembly Speaker Sheila Y. Oliver are also believed to be weighing possible candidacies.