New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker Wins U.S. Senate Seat

New Jersey voters returned Democratic incumbent Sen. Cory Booker to Washington for his first full term Tuesday, as he defeated a challenger with low name recognition and extended the party's firm grip on the office, according to projections by NBC News and the Associated Press. 

Booker, the former Newark mayor, defeated Republican challenger Jeff Bell, a conservative whose signature issue was backing the dollar through the gold standard.

Booker's victory comes despite a national Republican effort to cast President Barack Obama, whose approval ratings are sagging, and congressional Democrats as boogeymen. The approach failed in New Jersey, which voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 and has not elected a Republican to the Senate since 1972.

"So, New Jersey you've given me six years. I'm rolling up my sleeves and I'm getting to work," Booker said during a nearly 11-minute victory speech. "We're gonna fight to unite our country again."

His remarks touched on the need for the country to set aside partisan differences, and while the economy was moving it wasn't moving fast enough, he said.

Booker won a special election last year for the seat that was vacated after the death of Democratic U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg.

Though voters have alternated electing Republicans and Democrats as governor and the state's U.S. House delegation is roughly split, Booker's win keeps both Senate seats — Democrat Bob Menendez holds the other post — in Democratic hands.

The 45-year-old Booker focused his campaign on bipartisanship, highlighting his work with Republicans in Washington in cable TV ads. During his first year in the Senate, he struggled to pass signature legislation, but he did co-write a pilot program aimed at veterans with traumatic brain injuries included in legislation passed.

Booker's win never seemed in doubt. Bell returned to New Jersey, where he defeated incumbent Republican Sen. Clifford Case in the 1972 Senate primary, from suburban Virginia where he lived for three decades. He served as the policy director of a conservative think tank and was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, too.

Bell conceded that he had been away from the state for a long time, but wanted to provide voters with a clear contrast in the election. He said he's satisfied with the campaign he ran and that he would like to stay in New Jersey.

"Despite having lost, I do not regret for a moment having made the race. I have nothing but the greatest admiration and respect for the people of New Jersey," Bell said in his concession speech.

Elsewhere in the state, Bonnie Watson Coleman, a state lawmaker since 1998, became the first woman elected to Congress in the Garden State since 2000. Coleman defeated Republican Alieta Eck to win the state's 12th Congressional District, which represents parts of Mercer, Middlesex, Somerset and Union counties.

Track NJ's U.S. House seat winners here 

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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