While some candidates were still trying to get things together in order to meet Monday's filing deadline to enter the special election for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the death of Frank Lautenberg Quinnipiac University released a poll showing that Newark Mayor Cory Booker has a commanding lead, according to USA Today.
The primaries for the special elections aren't until August 13 so the numbers may change radically but as of today Booker has the support of 53 percent of Democratic primary voters while his opponents Rush Holt and Frank Pallone only have 10 percent and 9 percent support respectively, Quinnipiac reports.
"It's Newark Mayor Cory Booker in a runaway in this first look at the special election," Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute said. "Who are those other guys? The record shows that Congressman Frank Pallone and Rush Holt are big in their districts, but, statewide, no one knows them."
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie chose Jeff Chiesa, a Republican, to be the interim Senator until the special election is held on October 16, just three weeks before the general election. Christie has come under fire for scheduling the special election at that time from Democrats who say he did so in order to avoid an influx of Democrats showing up at the polls and potentially hurting his run for reelection, as well as costing the state an estimated additional $24 million, according to Reuters.
Bloomberg reports that Booker will have some major fundraising help as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, will hold a fundraiser for the Newark mayor. Zuckerberg, who has never declared a party affiliation, donated $100 million to help schools in Newark alongside Booker and Gov. Christie on the Oprah Winfrey show in 2010.
Booker announced that he has the support of George Norcross, a long time player for the Democratic Party in South Jersey. Support from people like Norcross will be key for a candidate in a special election of this type where the main goal is to get people out to vote, according to Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute.
"The question that we have is how many of his voters will actually show up in the primary," Murray told USA Today. "You've got to get people knocking on doors in a primary that will be low turnout. It's all about organization."
Republicans appear to not be too interested in participating in the election with only one candidate declared so far, former Bogota mayor Steve Lonegan. New Jersey is a heavily Democratic state with roughly 700,000 more Democrats than Republicans registered to vote. Murray says that the lack of Republican interest is a sign.
"This is unprecedented and they are facing the embarrassment of not having any known office holder willing to run," Murray said. "Everyone has written this seat off except the Democrats."
