Newark Mayor Cory Booker, widely regarded as a prohibitive favorite to win the late Frank Lautenberg’s U.S. Senate seat in New Jersey, enjoys a commanding lead against his three rivals for the Democratic nomination, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released yesterday.
The popular Newark mayor is favored by 52 percent of the state’s Democratic voters, putting him some 42 points ahead of U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, his closest rival.
Pallone, who was first elected to Congress in 1988, was endorsed by the Lautenberg family on Monday. The 61-year-old Pallone began the campaign with a war chest in excess of $3.6 million — more than double the $1.6 million raised by the front-running Booker at the outset of the race last month.
Congressman Rush Holt, a former Princeton University professor who once served as assistant director of the university’s world-renowned Plasma Physics Laboratory, placed third in the Quinnipiac poll with 8 percent.
State Assembly Speaker Sheila Y. Oliver, arguably the most feisty candidate in the field and whose unexpected candidacy has baffled Garden State pundits, was favored by only three percent of the Democrats surveyed.
Steve Lonegan, the former head of the New Jersey chapter of the Koch brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity and one-time mayor of Bogota, holds a seemingly insurmountable 57-point lead over little-known Piscataway physician Alieta Eck in the Republican primary, according to Quinnipiac.
In a hypothetical head-to-head contest against Lonegan, Booker leads by a 23-point margin, 53 percent to 30 percent.
“It looks as if the speculation was right: Newark Mayor Cory Booker seems to be a shoo-in for the U.S. Senate,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
The U.S. Senate primary will be held on August 13.
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