Throughout the race, Mr. Booker’s three rivals — all serious political forces in New Jersey — struggled to shift the focus on their own qualifications, prompting increasingly direct attacks on Mr. Booker’s record and business interests, including his ownership stake in an Internet start-up that had been created with financial backing of his powerful friends while he was in office. 
 
 Mr. Booker’s campaign pushed back hard against the attacks, saying there was nothing improper about his financial dealings and noting that he had given much of his income to charity and used his media appearances to focus attention on Newark. As he campaigned, he portrayed what his opponents saw as a weakness — that he was insufficiently liberal on issues important to Democrats like gun control and unions — as a strength. He argued that his pragmatic brand of politics, favoring practical solutions over ideology, had enabled him to lift the fortunes of Newark, the state’s largest city. 
 
 His message seemed to register with voters. Juan Valdes, a 38-year-old Palisades Park resident who voted for Mr. Booker, said that the mayor’s record in Newark far outweighed any criticism his rivals had. 
 
 “You can actually see the changes” in Newark, he said outside a polling place. “How he turned Newark, of all places, around to where it is, I figured he could do some good for the rest of us.” 
 
 Mr. Booker’s political rise has been unconventional. After graduating from Yale Law School in 1997, he moved to Newark, where he lived in a housing project and became a community activist, making a successful bid for a City Council seat a year later. He positioned himself as an outsider, challenging the city’s political establishment. In 2002, he ran against Sharpe James, the powerful Newark mayor who had been dogged by scandal. Mr. Booker lost that race, but four years later won his second bid for the office and later a second term. 
 
 Mr. Booker’s public profile has always been much larger than would be expected for the mayor of a medium-size city. He is a regular on cable television shows, is in great demand on the speaking circuit and has long been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate. His ascension to the Senate would make him one of the most recognizable figures in a chamber known for its exclusivity. ||||| By Matt Friedman and David Giambusso/The Star-Ledger 
 
 NEWARK — Newark Mayor Cory Booker has easily prevailed in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary tonight, the Associated Press projects. 
 
 Booker will now face Steve Lonegan, the Republican primary winner, in the Oct. 16 special election to succeed the late Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.). 
 
 Results show Booker well ahead of his three rivals tonight: U.S. Reps. Rush Holt (D-6th Dist.) and Frank Pallone (D-12th Dist.), and state Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex). The difference is so large — with Booker leading his closest opponent, Pallone, by a two-to-one margin — that the Associated Press called the race with just 7 percent of the vote in. 
 
 With 98 percent of the vote in, Booker leads Pallone 59 percent to 20, followed by Holt with 17 and Oliver with 4. 
 
 "In Washington, so many people focus on right and left," Booker said in his victory speech tonight in front of hundreds of supporters gathered outside the Prudential Center in Newark. "Here in Newark, we're only concerned with one direction — and that is moving forward. Make me your Senator, and I will be unwavering in my focus in finding common ground." 
 
 "I believe that this state will once again light the way forward for all of America," he added. 
 
 Just after 8:40 p.m., when the primary was called for Booker, legendary hip-hop star Q-tip took the stage outside the arena. 
 
 "The new Senator is wayyyyy ahead," Q Tip said in between a remix of The Jackson 5's "I Want You Back." 
 
 About 300 people were assembled on the plaza by 9 p.m. 
 
 Booker, 44, began the race as the frontrunner and never lost that status, raising far more money than his opponents and winning the backing of most of the state's Democratic organizations. His campaign also teamed up with South Jersey Democrats to get residents to cast their votes early by absentee ballot. 
 
 "I will be just like that twenty-something who came to Newark to represent people who couldn't afford fancy lawyers," Booker, a former city councilman, told the audience tonight. "I will care about you. I will care about results for all of the people in New Jersey." 
 
 Booker spent much of the race ignoring his three Democratic rivals, instead portraying himself as able to work across the aisle and get results, as demonstrated by relationship with Republican Gov. Chris Christie. 
 
 Though Holt, Pallone and Oliver frequently went after Booker, their attacks gained little traction. His campaign hit its bumpiest patch in its final two weeks, when the New York Times raised questions about a tech company he founded, Waywire. It was not, however, enough to overcome his huge lead in the polls. 
 
 Tonight, Booker praised his three primary opponents. 
 
 "They are our champions, too," He said. "We are no longer opponents. We are allies." 
 
 He also had kind words for his new opponent, Lonegan, a conservative activist, the former mayor of Bogota, and an aggressive campaigner who has been blasting Booker for weeks already. 
 
 "He is a person of strong beliefs and, I found already, even stronger rhetoric," Booker said. "I will match his negative attacks with positive energy. He wants to be a flamethrower. I want to be a bridge-builder." 
 
 Star-Ledger staff writer Brent Johnson contributed to this report. 
 
 RELATED COVERAGE 
 
 • Cory Booker's celebrity status could cut both ways in U.S. Senate 
 
 • Complete coverage of the 2013 special U.S. Senate election ||||| Republican U.S. Senate candidate Steve Lonegan talks to the media at the Bogota Recreation Center after he voted with his daughter Brooke, left, and wife, Lorraine, in the special election primary in... (Associated Press) 
 
 A rising star in the Democratic Party and a Republican former mayor won their parties' primaries on Tuesday to set up a campaign of political and stylistic contrasts as they seek to fill the final 15 months of the term of the late U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg. 
 
 Newark Mayor Cory Booker defeated three experienced politicians _ U.S. Reps. Rush Holt and Frank Pallone, who had the support of Lautenberg's family, and state Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver _ in a Democratic primary that may have been more competitive had the field been less crowded. The race was a major draw for them partly because of New Jersey's history of electing only Democrats to the Senate over the past 40 years. 
 
 In the Republican primary, former Bogota mayor Steve Lonegan won handily over Franklin Township physician Alieta Eck, who had never run for office before, even though she received support of some tea party organizations. 
 
 The election is on a compressed schedule. The day after Lautenberg's death, Republican Gov. Chris Christie scheduled the primaries for Tuesday and a special election for Oct. 16, 20 days before the voting day on which he's seeking re-election. The move drew criticism, with some opponents saying Christie was spending $12 million on an extra election so he could avoid being on the same ballot as Booker, a claim Christie denies. 
 
 Booker ran with the support of New Jersey's Democratic establishment and celebrities from across the country. Oprah Winfrey joined him at a fundraiser, and Eva Longoria campaigned with him. 
 
 Booker is famous in the political world for his life story and his social media fanaticism: He has 1.4 million followers on Twitter, which he uses to field complaints about local issues such as sinkholes and to dispense inspirational quotes. 
 
 He grew up in suburban Harrington Park, the son of some of the first black IBM executives, played football at Stanford, won a Rhodes scholarship, received a law degree from Yale, then moved into one of the toughest parts of Newark in an effort to revive the state's largest city. 
 
 He is in his second term as mayor. In the city, reviews are mixed, but his narrative has helped make him well-known elsewhere. And he's leveraged that power to help bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in grant money for the city, including a $100 million pledge from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. He's also given 90 paid speeches across the country since 2008, collecting $1.3 million, nearly half of which he has donated to charity. 
 
 Lonegan, who stepped down from his job as state director of the anti-tax group Americans for Prosperity, focused his primary campaign on blasting Booker. He held a news conference to ridicule Booker's broad anti-childhood poverty plan and another at the scene of a homicide in Newark to question whether Booker has done much to reduce crime. He's also been to the New York headquarters of Waywire, a technology startup Booker co-founded, to criticize his role in it. 
 
 For Booker, the new opponent means needing to gird himself for attacks from the right after spending an abbreviated primary campaign being criticized from the left by opponents. In debates, Booker found himself defending working with Christie, explaining that he disagrees with the governor "90 percent of the time" and promoting his conciliatory image. He also reaffirmed his support for using taxpayer money to send children to private schools, one of the few policy prescriptions on which he and Lonegan agree. 
 
 Lonegan is a familiar voice in New Jersey politics, blunt and conservative. He ran in and lost gubernatorial primaries in 2005 and 2009. He was a leader of successful opposition to ballot measures that would have raised a state sales tax and funded stem-cell research. 
 
 Like Booker, he grew up in suburban Bergen County, in Ridgefield Park, and played college football, at William Paterson. 
 
 Both candidates also became better known through documentaries released in 2005. "Anytown, U.S.A." looked at Lonegan's fiery re-election campaign in Bogota, and "Street Fight" chronicled Booker's first, and losing, run for mayor of Newark.
– No contest: Cory Booker won the Democratic primary for a Senate seat in New Jersey so easily tonight that the AP called it just 45 minutes after the polls closed and with just 7% of returns in, reports the Star-Ledger. The Newark mayor beat two congressmen and the state Assembly speaker. Booker hopes to serve the final 15 months of the late Frank Lautenberg's term. On the Republican side, former Bogota mayor Steve Lonegan easily won his race as well. The special election is Oct. 16. New Jersey voters have elected Democrats to the Senate for the last four decades, and the New York Times has Booker as the "heavy favorite." Quotes from the winning candidates: Booker: “Make me your senator, New Jersey, and I will be unwavering in my focus on finding common ground. I will not be concerned with right or left but going forward.” Lonegan: “I intend to run a line-in-the-sand campaign between a conservative and an extreme liberal. The differences could not be clearer.”