Examining the Dana Wefer for U.S. Senate Candidacy
The first thing you have to understand about Dana Wefer’s candidacy for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate is that the odds are strongly against her. To say the least, as she is running against a wealthy opponent (Bob Hugin) who has the backing of the state’s entire Republican establishment.
But when you look more closely at her press release and what she is trying to do, a lot of what Wefer says rings true. But it’s probably not going to help her get all that many votes in the Republican primary.
Call it the Catch 22 of politics.
Wefer notes that in travelling the state and gathering petition signatures, she discovered that a lot of people are in a sour mood when it comes to politics.
She put it this way:
“The Republicans I spoke with are not insiders, many don’t even vote in primaries and they have a very different perspective of the N.J. GOP than the party insiders do. At least three times a day, I had people tell me they weren’t Republican anymore or that even though they are registered Republican, they don’t want to associate with the party.”
She continues, “There is a general sense of disillusionment, even disgust. It’s a very different group than the Republicans who show up to events and participate actively in party politics.”
Two things come to mind here.
One is that Wefer is right. Average voters have little in common with party insiders. Many times, in fact, average voters are more cynical than the party bigwigs and candidates themselves. It is the average guy in the street, the coffee shop, or the mall who is prone to say things like, “They’re all a bunch of crooks,” or “Why bother voting, they’re all the same.” This is cynicism based on a certain amount of ignorance, but it’s cynicism still the same.
One thing it shows is a huge disconnect between the insiders (of both parties) and the people whose votes they are seeking. The world of politics is often both insular and fairly small.
Pick just about any county and either party and start attending rallies, fundraisers and other events. Chances are you are going to run into the same people every night. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it shows how small the “in” group of political insiders often is.
But here’s the obvious problem for Wefer. Those insiders and people like them are the people who vote, especially in primaries.
It’s all well and good to go door-to-door and have people tell you how disgusted they are with politics. But by and large, those individuals are not registered in a party and do not vote in primaries. Getting unaffiliated voters to declare a party preference at the polls and to vote in a primary is a hard sell, Keep in mind that many of those who are unaffiliated are unaffiliated for a reason – they simply don’t want to state publicly (or at least to the election workers) that they are a Republican or a Democrat.
Wefer has a history of challenging the status quo and she deserves a great amount of credit for doing so. About 10 years ago or so, she ran three times for county or state office in Republican Morris County as a Democrat. She had little chance, but she raised legitimate issues, earned respect from many of her competitors and was endorsed twice by the Morristown Daily Record. (Full disclosure; I was the paper’s editorial page editor at the time). More recently, she waded into the more bruising world of Hudson County politics while living in Hoboken and lost a run for city council..
Still, bucking the party establishment statewide is a monumental undertaking.
Wefer is right to talk about the disillusionment and detachment of average voters. But how do you get the disillusioned and the detached interested enough to register as a Republican or simply go to the polls on the first Tuesday in June? That’s a time when many average people are thinking about the kids getting out of school or taking a vacation.
She says in her own release that she met many Republicans who “don’t even vote in primaries.” How does that help her?
If Wefer has a magic formula to rouse the disgusted, many would love to see it. .
(Visited 103 times, 1 visits today)
Hugin will be a typical GOP disaster. The GOP is famous for running rich guys with no political base who claim they will self-fund their campaign, but don’t. Fact – all I get from him is fundraising emails. Even with Menendez’s baggage, Hugin may not break the 40% mark. As for Wefer, she will soon run out of parties to join. Any good she has done is diminished by her support for Bernie. Don’t know her, but my first impressions see a unfocussed malcontent. Granted the GOP is broken and nonfunctioning, but change usually generates from the inside, not from yelling in the woods.
If Dana manages to win the Republican nomination in June, she is very likely to generate the kind of excitement and attention that leads her to win in November…this would be no Trump Republican but a New Jersey progressive good government anti-machine Republican that just might be able to attract the votes of new voters and young folks who would be registering just to support her. People are hungry for real change and they are disgusted with a corrupt status quo that is all the more corrupt and disgusting because the corruption has been declared legal by our courts and lawmakers. Let’s face it, as it is now in America bribery has been made perfectly legal in many ways and on many levels that go beyond campaign finance laws.
If the machine establishment Republican wins in June, Menendez wins in November. I would vote for him, warts and all, over any conventional right wing Trumpists Republican……Dana Wefer and people like her are the future of the Republican party, if it is to have any future at all.