Silverstein will manage Booker re-election campaign

Adam Silverstein, one of New Jersey’s top Democratic strategists, will serve as campaign manager for Cory Booker’s bid for re-election to the United States Senate.

Silverstein was the architect of successful campaigns to elect James Tedesco as the Bergen County Executive and Josh Gottheimer as the congressman from New Jersey’s 5th district.  Both ousted Republican incumbents.

Booker faces a primary challenge from Lawrence Hamm, a former Newark school board member and now the chairman of Bernie Sanders’ New Jersey campaign organization.

The front runner for the Republican nomination is former U.S. Food and Drug Administration official Rik Mehta, potentially setting up the first statewide race between two non-white candidates in New Jersey history.

Mehta has won 11 consecutive contests for GOP organization lines in his primary against Hirsh Singh, Tricia Flanagan and Natalie Rivera.

Booker will have his longtime top political advisor, Mo Butler, at his side again as a senior advisor to the campaign. The Mercury partner served as Booker’s chief of staff when he was mayor of Newark and as the New Jersey chief of staff after he won a U.S. Senate seat in 2013.

The deputy campaign manager and political director will be T. Missy Balmir, who will leave her post as interim Hamilton Township business administrator to join the Booker staff next month.

Balmir served as African American base vote director for Bob Menendez’s 2012 and 2018 U.S. Senate campaigns and for Booker in 2014.  She is the co-chair of the New Jersey Democratic State Committee Black Caucus.

The national finance director for Booker’s Senate campaign will be Anne Sciaino, a veteran of Booker’s last two Senate race.  She served as New Jersey finance director for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and as a fundraiser for U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg and Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman.

Democrats have won the last sixteen U.S. Senate races in New Jersey.

Republicans have not won a U.S. Senate contest in New Jersey since Clifford Case was re-elected to a fourth term in 1972.  Only Hawaii has gone longer without electing a GOP U.S. Senator.