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Newark Mayor Cory Booker (second from left) and U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) (far right) are pictured in Newark in 2009.

(Aristide Economopoulos/The Star-Ledger)

TRENTON — Days before Newark Mayor Cory Booker announced he wanted to run for the U.S. Senate seat held by Frank Lautenberg in December, the two men's top aides tried to negotiate over the phone.

Lautenberg Chief of Staff Dan Katz told Booker adviser Mark Matzen the 88-year-old senator likely would retire, according to two former Lautenberg staffers who recounted the conversation on the condition of anonymity.

He had one request: Could Booker say he would not challenge Lautenberg and let him bow out on his own terms?

The answer was no. And on Dec. 20, Booker all but declared his candidacy for the seat. Although neither Katz nor Matzen would comment, Lautenberg’s son, Josh, confirmed the conversation.

"It was a simple request, and Cory Booker didn’t want to abide by that," he said. "You look at Frank Pallone, Rush Holt, Sheila Oliver or anyone else, and these folks all waited. They gave him the respect he deserved after many years of service."

For that and many other perceived slights, Lautenberg’s family members have not forgiven Booker. They’ve made it clear on the campaign trail by supporting one of Booker’s rivals, U.S. Rep. Pallone (D-6th Dist.), in the Aug. 13 Democratic primary, which was called after the senator’s death last month.

Members of the family have gone out of their way to throw elbows at the mayor. In a family statement early this month, they poked fun at Booker, calling him a "show horse" full of "gimmicks" who does not "share core Democratic values or loyalty to the party."

At a press conference with Pallone Monday, the senator’s widow, Bonnie Englebardt Lautenberg, said "being great on TV and raising money outside of the state doesn’t mean you’re going to be effective in the United States Senate."

Lautenberg’s death amplified a feud that long had simmered, known to insiders and occasionally boiling over in public comments by the senator, who suggested in January that Booker needed a "spanking."

Josh Lautenberg, who lives in Colorado, insisted the endorsement of Pallone had nothing to do with Booker but resulted from a long-established working and personal relationship between the congressman and the senator.

"We’re endorsing Frank Pallone because he’s an amazing guy. A very compassionate man who’s a fantastic legislator," he said.

Booker has consistently refused to take the bait.

"Mayor Booker always admired Sen. Lautenberg, worked with him on numerous projects, and when the senator faced a primary challenge in 2008, he had no stronger supporter than Cory Booker," his spokesman, Kevin Griffis, said in a statement. "If elected, the mayor will continue the senator’s work and his fight for New Jersey families."

Relations between the famously stubborn senator and the charismatic Booker frayed early in the mayor’s tenure, as Lautenberg — who considered himself a hard worker who didn’t seek the spotlight — bristled at what he saw as Booker’s empty headline grabbing, aides say.

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Some in the Booker camp say the senator turned cold on the mayor as soon as he perceived him as a potential challenger. Lautenberg’s family says it was based on substantive issues. At a state delegation breakfast at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Josh Lautenberg was in the room with his father when Booker gave a speech about New Jersey pride.

"Afterwards, I said, ‘Wow, that was some speech.’ And my father said, ‘That was all words. It was no substance,’ " Josh Lautenberg said. "I started to realize that a lot of what he did, which really frustrated my dad, were stunts."

Yet the senator did work with Booker over the years.

Griffis, Booker’s spokesman, said the two men worked together on improving Newark Penn Station, securing federal neighborhood stabilization grants and boosting suicide prevention programs for veterans.

But their relationship wasn’t always productive, according to two former Lautenberg staffers who, on the condition of anonymity, gave an account of a more recent interaction that further angered the senator.

In 2011, new legislation making its way through Congress called the America Invents Act required the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to open three satellite offices around the country. Lautenberg, who had consulted with New Jersey intellectual property lawyers, thought Newark would be an ideal location. His staff met with Booker’s staff and requested that the mayor advocate for his city once the bill was signed into law by writing to the Patent and Trademark Office, which had requested input from the public and local officials on new locations, according to the former staffers.

From his seat on the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Lautenberg quietly inserted language into a report accompanying an appropriations bill that would fund the act. It specified that "the committee directs USPTO, when selecting locations for additional satellite offices, to factor in the volume of patent activity, access to transportation options and proximity to a high concentration of universities." Without naming Newark, the language pointed directly at it.

But neither Booker nor anyone else in Newark sent a letter to the patent office. The staff members said Lautenberg was upset, feeling he took on the hard work and Booker’s role would’ve been easy. Denver, Dallas and Silicon Valley were selected for the satellite offices, in addition to Detroit, which automatically got one.

Griffis declined to comment on the matter.

Josh Lautenberg, who didn’t know the details about the attempt to get a patent office for Newark, said he did not doubt his father was upset about it.

"These are the things that bugged my father about him," he said. "That he seemed like he was more focused on the national spotlight and being on Oprah than taking care of his city."

Jim McQueeny, a public relations executive who was a friend and former chief of staff to Lautenberg, said there were a lot of missed cues on both sides of the divide in the run-up to Booker’s announcement. Lautenberg was sick, McQueeny said, and "some exchanges with Cory were amiss or overlooked."

"It was read more antagonistically by the Booker people than perhaps it should have been," McQueeny said. But he added, "To speak to Cory’s side on this, there were a lot of things that Cory really had to do that would have been convenienced by Frank if he had been more explicit in his plans, even privately. That just didn’t really occur."

Experts say the Lautenberg family’s endorsement of Pallone and its criticism of Booker won’t have a significant impact on a race in which the mayor has a huge lead in the polls. And Lautenberg’s anger didn’t stop several senior members of his senate or campaign staff from joining the mayor’s campaign. His former state director, Brendan Gill, was the latest to sign on this month.

Josh Lautenberg said the family is more pro-Pallone than anti-Booker.

"There’s no bitterness. My father may have had that when he was alive because it was a little personal between the two of them," he said. "This is about who we think is the best person for the job, based on history and record."

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