Booker’s Opponents May Use His Friendship With Christie Against Him
Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times
Mayor Cory Booker and Gov. Chris Christie appeared together in 2010 to speak about how a $100 million donation from Facebook would improve schools in Newark.
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ
Published: July 4, 2013
He has been a guest at the governor’s state-owned beach house and once spent time backstage with the governor’s wife and children after a Taylor Swift concert.
He even introduced Mr. Christie to his new friend, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, who has since raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the governor.
For years, Cory Booker, the celebrity mayor of Newark, has been an unlikely supporter, ally and even friend of Mr. Christie, the only New Jersey politician with a national following to rival his own.
By most accounts, the relationship between Mr. Christie, a Republican, and Mr. Booker, a Democrat, is based on genuine fondness, as well as an admiration they have for the talents that have made them stars in their respective parties.
More than that, Mr. Booker and Mr. Christie have benefited politically from their association, as they moved to establish straight-talking personas that eschew the kind of partisan politics that often grip Washington.
“On a different number of levels, we kind of understood each other as outsiders and tried, as best we could, despite obvious political and philosophical differences we have, to be able to forge a productive relationship,” Mr. Christie said in an interview.
But now, as Mr. Booker seeks the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat left open by the death in June of Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, his chumminess with Mr. Christie, who is running for re-election this year, is becoming a central issue in the race.
Some of the mayor’s Democratic rivals say that if he has any liability in winning the support of the party faithful in a primary, it is his relationship with Mr. Christie, who often uses steamroller tactics against his opponents, many of them Democratic interest groups, like labor unions. With the mayor enjoying a huge lead in the polls, his opponents are signaling that they plan to make his ties to the governor a major theme in the primary campaign, arguing that it is emblematic of the complicated relationship the mayor has had with his own party, particularly its liberal base.
Representative Frank Pallone, Democrat of central New Jersey, who is also pursuing the Senate seat, said in an interview, “I’m very concerned about his close relationship with the governor because I don’t think he has used that relationship to advance a progressive or Democratic agenda.”
Mr. Pallone has nearly $4 million in his campaign treasury to flood the airwaves with this line of attack. At least one other rival in the race, Sheila Y. Oliver, the speaker of the State Assembly, appears likely to pursue a strategy of questioning Mr. Booker’s commitment to bedrock Democratic principles, while the other, Representative Rush D. Holt, has given no indication of how he plans to engage Mr. Booker, the front-runner.
In a recent interview, Mr. Booker made no apologies for his relationship with Mr. Christie and seemed to suggest that his critics were engaging in the kind of partisanship that voters have come to abhor. “I could write a dissertation about our disagreements,” Mr. Booker said. “But I consider him a friend.”
Mr. Booker has pleased Republicans and dismayed Democrats with the stances he has taken on several sensitive issues, including his support for school vouchers and the moderate position he has sought to stake out between gun rights and gun control, positions that are popular among conservatives.
And many in the Democratic Party are still angry that Mr. Booker chose not to run against Mr. Christie this year, after keeping the party waiting for months as he debated whether to challenge his friend. In December, he announced that he would run instead for the Senate in 2014, further distressing some in his party since Mr. Lautenberg had not, at that point, indicated he would retire.
As Barbara Buono, the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor, tries to cut into Mr. Christie’s lead in the polls, Mr. Booker has had to walk a fine line between his loyalty to the party and his friendship with the governor.
Mr. Booker has campaigned with Ms. Buono and even helped her raise money. But he has deliberately resisted leveling any personal attacks on the governor, even as other Democrats say they hope he more forcefully challenges Mr. Christie for the sake of the party.
Even some Democratic critics of Mr. Christie privately acknowledge that attacking the relationship could backfire, given the governor’s popularity in the state. But they are counting on Democratic primary voters to be more skeptical, because of the governor’s opposition to initiatives popular among Democrats, like a bill to raise the minimum wage and a bill to legalize gay marriage.
“The other Democratic candidates have to distinguish themselves quickly in this race,” said Ben Dworkin, the director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics. “And it makes sense for them to portray themselves as better Democrats than Booker, given his strong ties to the Republican governor.”
Mr. Booker and Mr. Christie offer striking contrasts in style. Where the governor can be gruff and combative when confronting opponents, the mayor seeks to win people over with his ready smile and smooth talk.
Yet both took a common path to power as charismatic outsiders decrying New Jersey’s often-corrupt political establishment.
In fact, the relationship traces its roots to 2002, when Mr. Booker asked Mr. Christie, then a United States attorney, to monitor the elections and combat voter fraud in his race against Sharpe James, the scandal-plagued mayor of Newark. Mr. Booker lost that race, but four years later won his second bid for the office.
And Mr. Christie successfully prosecuted Mr. James on political corruption charges.
The ties between the men deepened after Mr. Christie won the governorship in 2009. The two found common ground in one area in particular, reviving the sagging fortunes of Newark, the state’s biggest city — and, as it happens, Mr. Christie’s birthplace.
Over the years, the two have collaborated on a range of development projects that have helped lure corporate giants like Panasonic to Newark and transformed fallow, state-owned lots around the city into produce farms and markets for residents.
Perhaps their best-known work is in the area of education reform. In 2010, the governor took the extraordinary step of ceding some state control of Newark’s notoriously troubled schools to Mr. Booker and working with him to overhaul the system.
The effort centered around a much-publicized $100 million gift to Newark schools from Mr. Zuckerberg, which Mr. Booker and Mr. Christie announced during a joint appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
“All of that happened because the governor and I are not focusing on the things we disagree on,” Mr. Booker said.
The relationship is not all business. The two also shared laughs while filming a skit last year in which they poked fun at each other for the annual New Jersey Press Association dinner. And Mr. Christie and Mr. Booker touch base via text messages and enjoy chatting about subjects dear to them, like their love of Bruce Springsteen.
Mr. Christie described Mr. Booker as a friend and noted that the mayor had even become a familiar figure in the Christie household. His daughter Sarah, he noted, follows the mayor on Twitter.
“He’s definitely been encouraging her to go to Stanford,” the governor said, “which is not my wife’s favorite idea because it’s 3,000 miles away.”
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