One staffer in Cory Booker’s Senate office has a message for his opponent: “Suck it.”
That’s certainly at odds with Booker’s reputation for politeness and collegiality, but when Booker’s opponent, the former Reagan-administration official Jeff Bell, circulated my piece this morning, he got a response from Nichole Sessego, a Booker staffer who runs his (robust) digital operation. “JEFF BELL CAN SUCK IT,” Sessego wrote. The e-mail was apparently intended for somebody else: Sessego noted that she’d already seen the piece “in the clips,” a reference to the news articles routinely circulated in Senate offices.
The message was from Sessego’s personal account, which I’ve removed from the screen grab above. Booker communications director Beth DeFalco says, “Earlier today a young staffer sent an email to Mr. Bell’s campaign by mistake that contained wholly inappropriate language. She has apologized to Mr. Bell. Sen. Booker does not condone that type of language or tone being used anywhere.”
My piece broaches the subject of why so many Republicans appear unwilling to go after Booker, one of the Senate’s most high-profile Democrats and surely a potential running mate for the party’s 2016 nominee:
Cory Booker may be the most puzzling man in the Senate. We don’t know where he lives. We don’t know whom, if anyone, he lives with. And he’s been caught in lie after lie about his heroics. Yet, this enigma of a man has emerged as the king of odd-couple bromance, using selfies and Instagram posts to burnish his stardom even as he appears surprisingly vulnerable in his upcoming bid for reelection. . . .
Many of Booker’s fiercest ideological opponents, however, are riding the Booker juggernaut rather than going in for the kill. Cory Booker can be beaten, at least the polls suggest so. So why are they so eager to cozy up to him, so hesitant to take him on?
The whole thing is here.