Senate candidate Steve Lonegan tweet labeled offensive taken down

TRENTON, N.J. (WABC) -- Aides to U.S. Senate candidate Steve Lonegan in New Jersey have taken down a social media post that Newark Mayor Cory Booker's campaign says was offensive.

The offending tweet popped up Thursday night as Newark Mayor Cory Booker was debating his democratic rivals for senate.

"Breaking! Just leaked!" Tweeted the campaign of Republican candidate Steve Lonegan. "Cory Booker's foreign policy debate notes."

It went on to depict a map of Newark, with neighborhoods circled, pointing to nationalities or ethnicities, like Guyana and West Africa, Pakistan, Afghanistan and The Middle East!

"The kid that did it thought he was saying something funny in response to the mayor's quotes during their debate, which were vapid. And I think the map was just as vapid," Lonegan said.

Lonegan, the former mayor of Bogota, says the tweet was the work of a 20-year-old staffer and it was quickly taken down, but then he doubled down.

"Well you know the mayor of Newark referred to Newark as the Middle East which in many ways is very appropriate because Newark is a war zone, just like the Middle East," Lonegan said.

"That's the kind of stuff that divides people insults people puts people down," Booker said.

At a campaign stop in Maplewood Friday night, Booker was predictably outraged by the insult, but the real outrage is in Newark.

"It looks really racist," said Marquise Jefferson, a resident.

Where on the steps of City Hall, locals like Marquise Jefferson tried to make sense of the tweet.

"The part of Newark that he singled out there isn't Middle Eastern, Guyanese or Afghani, or even Trinidadian. We do have some of those people but most of them are just American citizens," Jefferson said.

Seen another way, the tweet is less about Newark and more about Booker's foreign policy credibility, or lack thereof.

"That probably is the extent of Cory Booker's foreign policy experience, he has none. ( Do you?) But his record as mayor, (Do you have foreign policy experience?) I have a lot more experience, I've travelled extensively abroad in many, many countries," Lonegan said.

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