Cory Booker wants to be a senator so bad. But a string of disturbances—including Booker’s Twitter-flirting with a Portland stripper—have finally caught up to the ambitious Newark mayor: Booker’s lead over Republican Steve Lonegan, once as wide as the Hudson River, now sits between 12 and 3 percent. So Mike Bloomberg, having nothing better to do with his time or money, is bankrolling a pro-Booker ad campaign. Who said Cory Booker spent too much time in Manhattan?

According to The New York Times, the aggrieved billionaire’s personal political action committee, Independence USA, is dropping a million dollars on television commercials supporting Booker and blasting Lonegan.

As his allies move to shore up what was supposed to be a painless path to Congress, the biggest and wealthiest of them, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, will start spending more than $1 million on Monday to broadcast television commercials on Mr. Booker’s behalf, a vast sum to pour into a single candidacy. ...

“He changed the zeitgeist from ‘Newark is ungovernable’ to ‘Newark is governable,’ ” said Mr. Bloomberg, who has been a longtime admirer of Mr. Booker.

Prior to Booker, who many thought had the race locked up, Independence USA mostly targeted anti-gun-control candidates in races spread throughout the country. The PAC’s investment in Booker, while embarrassing in its own right, only further confirms the candidate’s real constituency: Not the residents of Newark or the citizens of New Jersey, but billionaire New Yorkers like Mike Bloomberg and Mark Zuckerberg. This last-minute collaboration, prompted by one too many high-profile distractions, was pretty much inevitable.

[Photo credit: Associated Press]