When the votes were counted Wednesday night, Booker won the seat with relative ease; his margin was a comfortable 55-45 over Republican Steve Lonegan. Lonegan was a Tea Party favorite and, at a moment of intense division in New Jersey and nationally, he took stances in stark contrast to those of Booker. The choice was clear.
Yet, as Politico noted, “turnout was low: About 1.2 million votes had been cast by 10:30 p.m., in a state of almost 5.5 million registered voters.” That means that Booker will go to the US Senate with the voting-booth endorsement of only a small fraction of the New Jersey electorate. Booker would, undoubtedly, have won in a higher-turnout election—presumably by an even wider margin.
What Christie’s manipulation of the process guaranteed was that Booker would go to the Senate with the slimmest possible mandate. And the governor engaged in that manipulation with the self-serving purpose of assuring that Booker voters would not threaten Christie’s November re-election run. That’s an atrocious abuse of the political process.
No one should forget what Chris Christie did to empower himself and to disempower everyone else. New Jersey voters should remember in November—it won’t be hard, the general election is less than three weeks off. And voters beyond New Jersey, who might encounter Christie as a 2016 presidential candidate, should also remember. A politician who is so willing to disregard democracy in order to advance his own ambition deserves to be greeted with skepticism by Republicans and Democrats.
