Why I Voted For Rush Holt

Earlier today I voted in the New Jersey Democratic Party primary election for the upcoming special election to the Senate seat vacated by the death of best-New-Jersey-politician-ever Frank Lautenberg. I voted for Rush Holt, who is currently my Congressman. Rush Holt is not going to win; the latest poll had him at 15%, competitive for second place with Rep. Frank Pallone (17%) but miles behind Newark Mayor Cory Booker who's at 54%. In a couple of months Booker will face Republican Steve Lonegan (who was Tea Party before it was cool) in the general election, and I will happily vote for him. I like Cory Booker. But I didn't vote for him, and I wish he weren't going to win. Here's why.


Let's start with the basics, namely how one should make a decision when voting in a primary election. This is assuming that one is a strong partisan, i.e. that you know for sure that you prefer any of your own party's candidates to any potential nominee of the other party. In that case, the first question is electability: are there any differences in how likely the various candidates would be to win the general election? But in this case I think the answer is 'no.' It requires a little bit of work to establish this fact. In the Quinnipiac poll I cited above, Booker led Lonegan 54% to 29%, while Pallone only lead 38% to 34% and Holt had a measley 36%-34% lead. However, you'll note that there are an awful lot more undecideds in those match-ups than in the Booker one. That is, presumably, because Holt and Pallone have much lower profiles than Booker and are much less well-known. But New Jersey is a Democratic state, Lonegan is insane, and I'm pretty much certain that the 25% undecided contingent in the Holt/Pallone match-ups are overwhelmingly Democratic. They would win. Their leads would probably go way up once they won the primary, actually, but I just don't see that Lonegan would have much of a chance here. So one is free to vote for the evidently-somewhat-less-electable candidates, Holt or Pallone, rather than the guy with the enormous leads. The seat is safe anyway, and it's not that Holt is unelectable, it's just that he's unknown, but that would change. So far, so good.

The second issue is ideology: from among the candidates who would be competitive in the general election, one should vote for the one whose policy platform is closest to your own. In this case I think that means Holt, who is quite left-wing. I wouldn't call either Pallone or Booker a moderate exactly, but Booker does have this kind of post-partisan aura and is often described as somewhat of a "neoliberal." Honestly I think they're all fine by ideology, though I do slightly prefer Holt, especially for his particular focus on environmental issues which are in my opinion the most important thing right now. But this isn't a big deal any which way.

The third consideration, really, is tactics. If there's a serious threat that a candidate who is unacceptable by either of the first two criteria might win the primary, you need to cast your vote in such a way as to minimize the odds of that happening, even if it means voting for the person who is not your own personal first choice for the position. For instance, if the polling showed Booker 35%, Rep. Rob Andrews, who is actually unacceptably left-wing, 30%, and Holt 15%, I'd vote Booker without a moment's hesitation, because Holt wouldn't be a viable candidate and I'd want to vote more against Andrews than anything else. But this isn't like that. There's only one viable candidate and he's fine, and therefore the tactical considerations basically disappear.

So what's left is the ideosyncratic stuff. I like Rush Holt. He's my Congressman, and he's cool. He's a rocket scientist. His granddaughter went to summer camp at my elementary school once. Now, I like Booker too, as I said, but Rush Holt feels very much like my representative, and I'd be thrilled to have him be my representative at a higher level. He's also older than Booker, at age 64, so he's not likely to get very many more chances (unless Bob Menendez gets indicted, heh).

But the real deciding factor in this race, for me, is not really about this race at all. It's about that other election, the one actually scheduled for 2013 in advance. It's about the gubernatorial election, and it's about Gov. Chris Christie. I don't like Governor Chris Christie. He's odious, and he's aggravatingly popular for reasons that don't actually defy me because I completely get what's going on by they defy me in the sense that I can't understand how anyone could get taken in by him. He's also going to cruise to re-election. The Democratic nominee/scapegoat, Barbara Buono, trails him by about thirty points in all the polling. And there's a very simple reason why he gets to coast to another four years governing my state: the Democratic machine has made nice with him. They're just fine working with him as governor for the foreseeable future, and apparently actually told Booker that if he ran for governor they wouldn't give him any resources with which to fight Christie. This, at a time when Booker was easily the only Democrat with a prayer of taking Christie on, sporting 3:1 favorable ratings and running about even with the incumbent in polling.

Basically, I want Cory Booker to be my Governor, not my Senator. Partly that's because of, if you like, positional adjustments: if Booker becomes my Governor, that means that my new Senator is either Holt or Pallone, whereas if he becomes my Senator that means I'm stuck with Governor Christie for another four years. I like the former arrangement much better, and the downside of the more aggressive play is that we still get Christie, as we will in reality, and instead of Senator Booker we'd get Senator Holt or Senator Pallone. That's not much downside. But I also think that Booker is much, much better suited to being Governor than to being Senator. That's for several reasons. His higher ambitions are obvious for all to see, and I don't think it's a stretch to say that he'll spend his time in the Senate trying to build up his national brand to set up a possible Presidential run, while Rush Holt's life ambition has been to be Senator and he would spend his time there, you know, trying to legislate. Okay, he wouldn't succeed, because no one can succeed, but I'd rather have a geeky, wonky, dedicated legislator doing my legislating. Furthermore, Booker does have this whole post-partisan schtick; I just saw a commercial of his about how, in Newark, he made a point of sitting down and talking to people who disagreed with him, but in Washington, people who disagree never talk to one another anymore, or something. Might be kinda true, but as a diagnosis of the problem it's terrible. The problem isn't lack of communication, it's lack of possible overlap of interests or any actual reason to cooperate on anything. The Republicans are committed to nihilistic opposition and let's-make-it-worse-so-the-revolution-will-come-ism bizarro-Leninism. Talking to them more will not change that.

On the other hand, I think Booker's style might work very well for the task of governing the State of New Jersey, the challenge of which, for a liberal Democrat, is mostly getting obnoxious moderate/conservative Democrats to fall in line. I bet he'd be good at that. And I think it would probably be a better stepping-stone for him, as it would present all sorts of opportunities to have "accomplishments," a thing unknown in the Senate these days.

So, to summarize: Cory Booker should've run for governor, both because he'd be a better governor than Senator and because it gives the party its best chance at a good result in both races. Instead he's running for Senator, blocking both Holt and Pallone who would almost certainly be better Senators than Booker would, and simultaneously handing his pal Chris Christie another term as Governor. Now that isn't necessarily entirely his fault, but I don't think it's zero percent his fault and I resent him for it, or at least his candidacy, either way. There are no tactical considerations involved and both of the alternatives are slightly more left-wing and significantly more dedicated to the business of Senatoring. None of them would lose to Lonegan. Add it all up and it's a pretty compelling verdict in favor of Rep. Rush Holt. Shame there's absolutely no chance he'll win.

Oh, and as of a couple of hours from now: go Cory Booker!