Dear Friend,
Shortly
before 10 p. m. on election night, I sent the
following text message to Senator Cory Booker:
Dear
Senator Booker: Sorry
to miss the chance to do this in a phone conversation,
but congratulations on your impressive
victory and
best wishes for the six years ahead.
All
the best,
Jeff
Bell
It
was a
well-run campaign and impressive Booker win, though
perhaps not quite as impressive as some New Jersey
pollsters expected. According to final unofficial
results posted at the website of the New Jersey state
election division,
Senator Booker got 997,331 votes to
my 762,981. That translates to 55.6 to 42.5 percent,
56-43 when rounded to the
nearest percentage point.
That is astonishingly close to my 55-43 defeat by Bill
Bradley for this same seat in 1978,
which leaves me in
something resembling a 36-year vote freeze.
I
am proud to have carried 9 of New Jersey’s 21
counties. I added Monmouth, Salem, and Warren to the
six I carried against
both Bradley and Booker (Cape
May, Hunterdon, Morris, Ocean, Somerset, and Sussex).
Because of political polarization,
demographic change,
and cultural clustering, Sen. Booker carried
some of the 12 counties in which he repeated
Bill
Bradley’s wins by much larger margins than
Bradley managed in 1978.
Needless
to say, I am heartened that Republicans achieved a
larger than expected congressional sweep, probably 54
Brush of
Politickernj.com, it puts added responsibility on our
party to develop a legislative program that can be
sent to
the desk of President Obama as well as help
provide a framework for the crucial election of
2016.
This
is a hard letter to write, because I enjoyed every
minute of the campaign and regret its conclusion as
well as my defeat.
Still, I am proud that we won more
than 750,000 votes while being able to spend just
under $500,000 for the primary and
general election
combined, roughly a tenth of Sen. Booker’s outlays.
Please don’t take this as a complaint because from
the
first, my brilliant first-time campaign manager Rich
Danker and I sensed that the fund-raising climate was
going
to be extremely unfavorable for a Senate race
against a popular incumbent in a state carried 58-40
by President Obama
just two years ago. Rich and I
decided to quit our jobs and descend on New Jersey
anyway because we knew that if I didn’t
run, no
candidate in this or any other state would make an
issue of the Federal Reserve’s disastrous six-year
experiment
in the systematic repression of short-term
interest rates, much less the urgent need to return to
a gold-backed dollar for
the first time in 43 years.
I
am deeply grateful to you, my generous supporters, and
to my minuscule campaign team superbly headed in both
the
primary and general election by Rich Danker and
Gia Coluccio, who as the campaign wore on found
themselves
outnumbered by my children, all of whom are
in their 20s and all of whom (it turns out) are
politically gifted.
I
also owe much to the Republican primary voters of New
Jersey, who in June gave me a chance to extend for
five months
this campaign of ideas, and to the New
Jersey Republican Party led by Governor Chris Christie
and National Committeeman
Bill Palatucci, as well as
my former primary opponent Rich Pezzullo, each of whom
did a great deal to make possible the
united party our
campaign had behind us in the general election. As in
1978, the voters of New Jersey had an open mind to
ideas the establishment said did not deserve a
hearing, and our campaign made me more optimistic than
ever about the
future of this remarkable state and the
exceptional nation of which it is a part.
All
the best,
Jeff
Bell
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