Kelly: Steve Lonegan's passion fueled by challenges

CHRIS PEDOTA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Steve Lonegan of Bogota with his wife, Lorraine, at a rally on Saturday at the New Egypt Speedway.

CHRIS PEDOTA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Steve Lonegan is also capable of pulling in support from national figures, including an appearance by former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Saturday.

Some people can point to a moment when their life changed and they embarked on a new path. For Steve Lonegan, the conservative Republican running for U.S. Senate in Wednesdays special election, that moment arrived about two years after he graduated from college.

It was 1982. Lonegan was legally blind a final diagnosis after years of deteriorating vision from retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary eye condition he had been battling since he was 16.

He could not find a job, he said. His only income was a Social Security disability check. He felt like a failure or, as he described his predicament recently, trapped in the entitlement state.

So, he said, he canceled his disability checks.

What may seem reckless and irresponsible to some was, to Lonegan, a sign of personal independence. It was also a sign of things to come.

Lonegan eventually jumped into politics and became a torchbearer for the anti-government Tea Party movement. And after being dismissed over the summer as a maverick conservative who never won elective office outside tiny Bogota, where he served three terms as mayor, he has emerged in recent days as a serious opponent to Cory Booker, the Democratic mayor of Newark. Bookers 30-point lead in August has shrunk to around 12 points, according to several recent polls.

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Kelly: Steve Lonegan's passion fueled by challenges