Oh, this is going to get interesting. Here in NJ, we're losing one Congressional representative, and the redistricting panel had to figure out who was going to lose a seat.
Well, my representative is on the chopping block. Democrats on the redistricting panel are pitting Steve Rothman, a Democrat, versus Scott Garrett, a Republican.
On the face of it, this appears to be a fair compromise considering that this part of the state lost more population than the southern part of the state, and the other options involved another Democrat, Bill Pascrell. Instead of pitting the two Democrats against each other, or Pascrell versus Garrett, they went with Garrett versus Rothman. That would be a highly competitive race, and would pit two ideologically disparate candidates against each other. Garrett is among the most conservative members of the GOP, while Rothman is among the more liberal members of the Democratic party.
The GOP members of the commission have to still provide their options but the tiebreaker, a Rutgers Law School Dean John Farmer Jr. seems to think that this is going to be the final outcome.
It would make one heck of a race next year and would probably set records for campaign spending as both Republicans and Democrats try to take the seat and make a point in the overall Congressional races.
No comments:
Post a Comment