The biggest story of New Jersey’s Election 2021 remains Ed Durr’s David vs. Goliath triump over Senate President Steve Sweeney in the 3rd Legislative District, Save jerseyans. The story becomes all the more remarkable as we total up the cycle’s campaign spending.
There’s a narrative in circulation – you’ve heard it – that Durr snuck up on the unsuspecting Dems who could’ve brought more resources to bear had they known a “red wave” was about to crash upon New Jersey’s coastline. While that’s undeniably true, that’s also a partial explanation for what happened and also represents self-serving spin for a Democrat establishment that did spend big and still got its collective ass kicked in South Jersey.
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The numbers are astounding:
The Democrat incumbent ticket of Sweeney, Adam Taliaferro and John Burzichelli spent almost $1.7 million; $464,000 of that haul was spent in the final two weeks of Election 2021.
By contrast, Senator-elect Durr and his victorious GOP Assembly running mates – Beth Sawyer and Bethanne Patrick – spent a mere $2,313.70 on their grassroots challenge.
Yikes. What does that tell you?
It tells me – and I’m going to risk offending the professional political class with this observation – that being in the right place with the right message matters a whole helluva lot more than all of the operative-driven mechanics in either party’s playbook. That was Christie in 2009, a charismatic U.S. attorney running at a time when the financial crisis screamed for someone to come in and upend the corrupt status quo. This year, Senator-elect Durr and his team knocked doors and worked; he’s nevertheless the first one to admit that November’s historic results were bigger than him, and that’s 100% accurate. Sweeney was uniquely positioned to bear the brunt of red/purple-district voters fed up with the vents of the prior 18 months.
The LD3 money story also confirms for me that the South Jersey Machine is, in 2021 at least, perhaps a bit overrated. If you want the real truth, the legendary Camden-based machine’s tactics (aside from VBM harvesting) are rarely superior going all the way back to its early victories in the 1990s. Norcross Inc.’s secret sauce has always been investing absurd amounts of money in targeted legislative districts. LD4 2003 (Madden vs. Geist) is still the standout example due to its $4.2 million price tag, far-and-away a record at the time.
It works both ways; remember when Sweeney survived that NJEA onslaught a few years ago? And when future NJGOP chairman Bob Hugin invested a significant percentag of his personal fortune only for Bob Menendez to hold on during the 2018 Democrat wave?
I’d argue that there’s a point of diminishing return (PODR) in the current digital/hyper-partisan age, and I’d further argue that politics is changing in such a way as the threshold for the PODR is trending downward, a fact that should terrify the Josh Gottheimer’s and Mikie Sherrill’s of the world heading into 2022.
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