Photograph by Waytao Shing/Getty Images for SXSW

Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark, NJ speaks onstage at the 2013 SXSW Music, Film + Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas.

Cory Booker, the Democratic mayor of Newark, New Jersey, raised $1.9 million for his 2014 Senate campaign in this year’s first quarter, including donations from well-known figures in sports, entertainment, lobbying and finance.

Jason Kidd,  point guard for the New York Knicks, and Victor Cruz, wide receiver for the New York Giants, were early Booker donors, according to a Political Capital analysis of a  finance report Booker’s campaign filed this week.

Booker, who played football at Stanford University, received a donation from David Shaw, the team’s head coach.

Other early Booker donors included directors Ron Howard and Rob Reiner; Christopher Albrecht, the president and chief executive officer of Starz Entertainment LLC; film producer Steve Bing; Barry Meyer, chairman of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.; Democratic lobbyist Jack Quinn; and Michael Berman, president of the Duberstein Group, a lobbying firm.

Booker also got a donation from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.

Booker is seeking the Senate seat of retiring Democrat Frank Lautenberg.

Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone has said he’s interested in the race and began April with $3.7 million in campaign funds, more than any other House member.

Original post is Booker’s Backers: Jason Kidd, Victor Cruz, Rob Reiner, Ron Howard by Political Capital.

Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, right, and Sen. Max Baucus arrive at the weekly Senate Democratic Policy Luncheon at the Capitol on Jan. 29, 2013.

That’s how many consecutive U.S. Senate elections Democrats have won in New Jersey.

The Democratic winning streak began in 1976, when Harrison Williams was elected for the fourth and final time, and was extended in 2012, when Democrat Robert Menendez was re-elected with 59 percent of the vote.

A Republican last won a Senate seat in 1972, when Clifford Case won his fourth and final term. Republican Nicholas Brady served in the Senate on an interim basis in 1982, when he was appointed to succeed Williams, who had resigned.

Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg announced yesterday that he would not seek re-election in 2014, when he will be 90 years old. Lautenberg won five Senate elections beginning in 1982.

Newark mayor Cory Booker and state Senate President Stephen Sweeney began exploring bids for the Democratic nomination prior to Lautenberg’s announcement.

New Jersey also is one of the nation’s most Democratic states in presidential elections. President Barack Obama won 58 percent of the vote in New Jersey in 2012, his ninth-best showing among the 50 states.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 13 by Political Capital.

Photograph by J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

Sen. Frank Lautenberg walks to the Senate floor from a Democratic caucus meeting on Capitol Hill on Feb. 14, 2013. Lautenberg, 89, has decided not to seek re-election on order to clear the way for Democratic Newark Mayor Cory Booker to assume the spot.

Octogenarian Frank Lautenberg – close to being a nonagenarian — seemed to delight in sending mixed signals on whether he would run for Senate re-election next year in New Jersey. So much so that the front page of yesterday’s New York Times featured a story on him headlined: Challenged for His Seat at 89, a Senator Does No Go Gentle.”

Gentle or not, today he went.

Lautenberg announced that he has decided to retire at the end of his current term. Aside from the obvious questions about his age that would have dogged a re-election bid, he faced the prospect of a primary challenge from fellow Democrat Booker, the 43-year-old mayor of Newark.

Booker had ruffled Lautenberg’s feathers  in December by announcing via a video that he had formed a committee to explore a Senate run. Booker’s move also surprised many New Jersey politicos, who thought it bad form he didn’t wait for Lautenberg to officially yield the political stage.

“If Mr. Booker was hoping to nudge Mr. Lautenberg toward the door, his announcement has had precisely the opposite effect,,” this week’s Times story said.  Lautenberg, it continued, “brightens at the prospect of tussling with a man half his age, even speaking openly to his staff about running again.”

Turns out he was just being a bit ornery.

Lautenberg is enough of a practical politician to know the odds were stacked against him. A Quinnipiac University poll, for instance, showed Booker leading the incumbent in a primary matchup by 21 percentage points, and that 71 percent said Lautenberg’s age would impede his work as a senator.

The survey was released Jan. 23, Lautenberg’s birthday. It couldn’t have been much of a present for him.

Original post is Lautenberg Goes — Maybe Not Gently — But He Goes by Political Capital.

Photograph by David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, New Jersey, arrives at the Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.

This time it was cold, not fire, threatening a Newark damsel in distress.

Still, Mayor Cory Booker knew just what to do: He swept her off her four furry feet, placed her in a police cruiser and ordered the heat cranked.

Booker, who pulled a neighbor from her burning apartment in April 2012, scored another rescue last night after Twitter posts from ABC-TV Eyewitness News reporter Toni Yates alerted him to a dog shivering on a front stoop. The temperature in Newark hit a low of 11 degrees yesterday, according to AccuWeather, during a streak of sub-freezing weather that started Jan. 18.

Booker, 43, has more than 1.3 million followers on Twitter, where the residents of New Jersey’s most populous city communicate with him on malfunctioning traffic signals, uncollected trash and crime. He also has formed a campaign committee in his bid for the U.S. Senate seat occupied by fellow Democrat Frank Lautenberg, 89.

Yates, who was on a news assignment, spotted the dog, which appeared to be a Rottweiler mix that had recently given birth, on the porch of a residence. She posted a message, which was retweeted by colleague Darla Miles. Booker arrived before 11 p.m. and carried the animal to a police cruiser, asking an officer to “crank up the heat.”

“This is brutal weather,” Booker said on camera. “This dog is shaking really bad.”

Owner Moises Rodriguez, interviewed by Eyewitness News, said he had been in Queens, New York, and wasn’t aware that the dog, named Cha-Cha, was outdoors. Her puppies were inside the home.

On Twitter, Booker shared the credit for the rescue with Yates: “Because of you, that dog was rescued.”

Original post is Super-Booker to the Twitter Rescue: ‘Cha-Cha Comes in from the Cold’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chris Kleponis/Bloomberg

Mitch Behm, assistant inspector general of the U.S. Transportation Department, left, and Senator Frank Lautenberg, center, a Democrat from New Jersey, before the start of a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing in Washington.

Frank Lautenberg might not be having such a good birthday: A new poll says the U.S. senator from New Jersey is vulnerable, and another high-ranking Democrat says he’s weighing whether to take on Gov. Chris Christie in November or seek the Senate seat next year.

The Democrat, who turned 89 today, doesn’t deserve to be re-elected, voters said in the Quinnipiac University poll by a margin of 45 to 36 percent. Seventy-one percent of those surveyed said his age makes work in the Senate too difficult, and just 21 percent said it gives him “wisdom and experience.”

Caley Gray, a spokesman for Lautenberg, didn’t immediately return an e-mail or phone call seeking comment.

State Senate President Steve Sweeney, a Democrat from West Deptford, said he’s “keeping his options open” on whether he’ll challenge Christie in November or seek a seat in Washington in 2014. Sweeney in December filed papers with the Federal Election Commission to run for Senate.

“It’s an exploratory thing,” he said today by telephone. “I’m looking at that, and I’m looking at a run for governor. I have a lot of options.”

Sweeney’s decision-making harkens to New Jersey’s drama last month over whether popular Newark Mayor Cory Booker would opt to challenge Christie in the fall or go for federal office. Booker ended up ruling out a challenge to Christie and has formed a Senate exploratory committee.

At least two other Democrats have said they might have their eyes on Lautenberg’s seat. Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, a Democrat from East Orange, told the Star-Ledger of Newark that she’s considering a run. The state’s largest paper also said U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone is eyeing it as well.

Original post is Lautenberg Turns 89, Poll Negative by Political Capital.

Magnet for Wall Street money.

Scooper-upper of imperiled neighbor in a burning apartment.

Now, filer of Federal Election Commission Form 1, “Statement of Organization,” to run for U.S. Senate in 2014.

Cory Booker, 44, is officially going after the seat of 88-year-old Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg, potentially setting up a primary race in a state that hasn’t sent a Republican to the upper house since 1972. Campaign paperwork names as treasurer Judith Zamore, who was compliance director for Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown’s successful U.S. Senate run in 2006. Zamore now is a principal for Capitol Compliance Associates, a Washington-based campaign-finance consultancy.

Booker didn’t immediately return an e-mail for comment. Lautenberg hasn’t said whether he will seek another term, and a spokesman, Caley Gray, didn’t immediately return an e-mail.

Booker’s filing comes three weeks after he dashed the hopes of New Jersey Democrats by declining a 2013 gubernatorial run against Republican Chris Christie, whose record approval in public-opinion polls after Hurricane Sandy basically makes him the most popular guy ever in New Jersey, politician or otherwise. Only one Democrat, state Sen. Barbara Buono from Metuchen, has declared a candidacy against Christie, and she was 43 points behind him in a Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll released Jan. 8.

A Booker-Lautenberg primary would have the youth-vs.-wisdom overtones of California’s Brad Sherman-Howard Berman contest for Congress in November, the result of redistricting that left the Democratic veterans fighting for a single seat. Sherman, the younger, prevailed. In New Jersey, Booker led Lautenberg by 42 percent to 20 percent among Democrats and Democratic leaners, PublicMind found in its survey released Jan. 10.

Booker, an Oxford Scholar who has degrees from Stanford and Yale Law, has persuaded Wall Street hedge-fund founders to sink private money into redeveloping Newark, New Jersey’s largest city, where a years-long industrial decline was capped by race riots more than 40 years ago. Single and childless, he lives alone in one of Newark’s most violent-prone areas. In April 2012, he ran into a neighbor’s burning apartment, rescuing her and suffering minor burns and smoke inhalation.

Original post is Booker Books a 2014 Senate Race by Political Capital.

Photograph by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama during a town hall style debate at Hofstra University.

Both President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney will claim victories in debate today as they and their surrogates attend rallies in the swing states of Iowa, Ohio and Virginia. Expect the frenetic campaign pace to continue through the weekend leading up to Monday’s final presidential debate showdown in Baco Raton, Florida.

Needing a strong performance to stem Romney’s surge in the polls with less than three weeks to go before Election Day, Obama delivered in last night’s debate at Hofstra University in New York, though it was far from a knock-out blow.

Forty-six percent of those surveyed by CNN said Obama fared better in the debate, compared with 39 percent for Romney. The poll found 73 percent saying Obama’s performance exceeded expectations, compared with 37 percent who said Romney did better than expected.

Speaking of expectations, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey faces stronger competition than he may have expected more than a year before the next state elections. Democratic Newark Mayor Cory Booker trails the first-term Republican governor by four percentage points in ` theoretical 2013 matchup, according to a Quinnipiac University poll out today.

Also today, the Securities and Exchange Commission meets to consider whether to propose capital, margin and segregation requirements for security-based swap dealers. Northrop Grumman briefs the media on its new unmanned ground vehicles for first responders and the military at the National Press Club. And Heather Zichal, the top White House aide for energy and climate, joins a roundtable discussion on natural gas at an American Council on Renewable Energy.

Original post is Washington Daybook: Swing States by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, New Jersey, at the Democratic National Convention.

Most of them have come from governors’ offices in the past century: The presidents of the United States.

Some from the Senate.

Not since Calvin Coolidge, however, has a one-time mayor of an American city become president. He came from Northampton, Mass. Before him, Grover Cleveland ran Buffalo, Andrew Johnson Greeneville, Tenn.

And no one has walked from a mayor’s office into the White House — which suggests that a certain career path must be crossed before any mayor makes it there. (Rudy Giuliani, “America’s mayor,” may have missed that message.)

Seeing a couple of young mayors ham it up for President Barack Obama (former senator), we were taken by how different these leaders are from Coolidge or Cleveland — in a nation which a generation from now is projected to become a majority of minorities. Mayor Julian Castro of San Antonio (seventh largest city) already has taken a step on to a national stage, at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte this year. And Mayor Cory Booker of Newark has made a name for himself as a one-man first responder in emergencies.

(Even Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey — making the rounds of the Sunday morning talk shows tomorrow, that governor’s path again — has joked about emulating Booker.)

They’re joking here about Castro’s twin brother, Joaquin, running for Congress, in this joint appearance in Texas, where a transition in population may well turn the biggest red state blue. There’s no joke about the constituencies they represent, and the increasing clout these blocs will play in future elections.

“If current trends continue,” the Pew Research Center reports, “the demographic profile of the United States will change dramatically by the middle of this century… The nation’s population will rise to 438 million in 2050, from 296 million in 2005, and fully 82 percent of the growth during this period will be due to immigrants arriving from 2005 to 2050 and their descendants.”

By 2050, Pew reports, “the nation’s racial and ethnic mix will look quite different than it does now. Non-Hispanic whites, who made up 67 percent of the population in 2005, will be 47 percent in 2050. Hispanics will rise from 14 percent of the population in 2005 to 29 percent in 2050. Blacks were 13 percent of the population in 2005 and will be roughly the same proportion in 2050. Asians, who were 5 percent of the population in 2005, will be 9 percent in 2050. ”

Obama broke a barrier with his election.

Another generation is getting ready to walk through that wall.

Original post is Castro, Booker: Paths from City Hall in a Swiftly Changing Nation by Political Capital.

The platform committee unanimously voted to approve the document and send it to the convention delegates meeting in Charlotte next month for ratification.

“We support marriage equality and support the movement to secure equal treatment under law for same-sex couples,” the platform plank says.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker, the platform committee’s co-chairman, called the plank “very significant” though said it wouldn’t have a major impact on the election. “It may repel some, it may attract others,” he told reporters. “This campaign is not going to turn on gay marriage.”

Obama lent his own personal endorsement to same-sex marriage earlier this year.

The document also makes reference to the DREAM Act, legislation to allow the children of undocumented immigrants to become legal U.S. residents if they attend college or serve in the military. President Barack Obama said June 15 that the government would stop deporting undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. before age 16, have been in the country for at least five years, have no criminal record and are in school or have a high school diploma or equivalent.

“These are not permanent fixes,” the platform says. “But these are steps in the right direction.”

Senate Democratic candidates Richard Carmona in Arizona, Shelley Berkley in Nevada and Martin Heinrich in New Mexico all urged that the DREAM Act should be part of the platform.

Echoing congressional Democrats, the party platform also calls for legislation requiring all groups running political ads to disclose their donors. A pro-Obama committee, Priorities USA, keeps its contributors hidden, as do groups supporting Republicans such as Crossroads GPS and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

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Original post is Democratic Platform Writers Propose Support for Same-Sex Marriage by Political Capital.

Photograph by Johannes Simon/Getty Images For 2nd CGDC Annual Meeting 2012

Bill Clinton

The ranks of Democrats defending Republican Mitt Romney’s career as a buyout executive have grown with a high-profile addition: former President Bill Clinton.

In an interview last night on CNN, the Obama campaign surrogate refused to fall in line with a campaign that has sought to portray Romney’s business record as one of raiding companies, looting them for profit and destroying jobs in the process. Instead, the former president had another word for Romney’s career: “sterling.”

“I don’t think we ought to get into the position where we say this is bad work; this is good work,” Clinton said of the private-equity industry. “A man who’s been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold” for the presidency, the former Arkansas governor said of the former Massachusetts governor.

Both the Obama and Romney campaigns have made it clear that Mitt Romney’s career as the head of Boston-based Bain Capital will be a focus of the 2012 campaign. While the Obama campaign originally sought to paint Bain as a “vampire,” sucking the life out of profitable companies, it has recently tried to pivot to say the buyout industry is healthy for the economy yet misses the mark when it comes to instilling a presidential candidate with the spirit of the job.

Romney, meanwhile, stresses that his years in finance make him qualified to tackle economic issues such as rising debt and weak job growth.

It remains to be seen whether Clinton will qualify his sterling approval of Romney’s business record. After Newark Mayor Cory Booker called the private-equity debate “nauseating” in a Meet the Press interview, he hurriedly backtracked, taping a YouTube video hours later to encourage the Obama campaign to examine Romney’s Bain career.

Other Democrats who have come to Bain’s defense include Steve Rattner, who headed Obama’s auto task force and previously co-founded the private-equity firm Quadrangle Group, and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, who on Thursday called Bain a “perfectly fine company.”

For all this, Clinton remains on message on at least one Obama campaign talking point: he still thinks Obama will keep the White House in November by five or six percentage points.

Original post is Clinton: Romney’s `Sterling’ Career by Political Capital.