It got lost in the high drama and lowjinks of the government shutdown crisis, but there was a special election in New Jersey yesterday to fill an open Senate seat, and gay ally Cory Booker won it. The mayor of Newark handily won the low-turnout vote by a double-digit margin, beating opponent Steve Lonegan.
The campaign was noteworthy for the amount of energy that Lonegan and company spent speculating about Booker’s sexuality. Booker, who has been advocating for gay rights since he was a college student, has said that he actually thinks it’s pretty great if people think he’s gay because “I want to challenge people on their homophobia.”
Lonegan was up to the challenge, largely by showing how homophobic he could get. Lonegan speculated about why Booker “likes to go out at three o’clock in the morning for a manicure and a pedicure,” while real he-men like Lonegan prefer “Scotch and a cigar.”
Just days before the election, Lonegan aide Rick Shaftan took aim at Booker for having had Twitter exchanges with a stripper. The problem, Shaftan complained, was that Booker wasn’t sufficiently hetero in the messages.
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“Hey, if he said, ‘Hey, you got really hot breasts man, I’d love to suck on them.’ Then like, yeah, cool,” Shaftan said in his best Jersey Shore manner. “But like, he didn’t say that. It was like kind of like, I don’t know, it was like what a gay guy would say to a stripper.”
Now that the meme is set, you can expect Republicans to keep making use of it.
Kieran
Who wants to vote for an angry blowhard who says things like, “I’m sorry if you get cancer, but that’s not my problem”. If Lonegan really wanted to win, why would he go out of his way to alienate 5-10% of voters who are gay or bisexual (not to mention their family and friends) by being gratuitously offensive? http://youtu.be/BtTJIKZRwb4
Dixie Rect
He will never come out, and will destroy NJ. NJ will be the next Detroit. Word.
Lawerence
@Dixie Rect: um! Yeah the word is frauds like you don’t know anything! You’re just blowing hot air and hatred! Shouldn’t frauds like you all be booking your one way tickets to Russia or some other hateful, awful place!
Dixie Rect
@Lawerence: I know a lot baby. He was/is a terrible mayor, he’s a rockstar politician, spending time with Oprah and Ben Affleck instead of dealing with the many issues in Newark. Russia? Nah, not for me.
Dakotahgeo
My God… no wonder the Republicans are eating sawdust for the main entrée politically!
Snapper59
Uhm….why was the vote “low turn out”? Because people couldn’t care less? Didn’t like either one?
Kangol
@Snapper59:
It was an off-year election on an unusual day (Wednesday), and not part of a general election, thanks to NJ Gov. Chris Christie, who did not want to have Co ry Boo ker on same ballot as him. (Or did you not know this?)
It cost the taxpayers of New Jersey an additional $24 million dollars. So much for Re publican fiscal conservati sm.
@Dixie_Rect:
Bo oker has been one of the best mayors of Newark in the last 40 years. He demonstrated this over and over after Hurricane Sandy.
Crime has gone down, the city is on the upswing with new businesses, it even opened an LGBT center right near the university.
Newark is losing a lot with Bo oker’s election, but New Jersey and the US are gaining an incredible visionary.
Scribe38
@Kangol: Thanks for bring a little common sense to the room