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U.S. Senate candidate Alieta Eck enters the News 12 television studio in Edison before her July 31 debate with fellow Republican Steve Lonegan. She and her husband, also a physician, operate a free health care clinic for the poor and uninsured.

(Aristide Economopoulos/The Star-Ledger)

FRANKLIN TOWNSHIP — The day U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg died, Alieta Eck was treating a patient at the free health clinic for the poor and uninsured she operates with her husband in Somerset County.

The patient, she said, had just learned her minimum-wage job was being cut from 37 to 29 hours a week, with her employer blaming the costs associated with President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

"She didn’t know what she was going to do," Eck said. "I realized: Obamacare is going to hurt people. How are we going to stop it?"

Eck paused.

"Then," she said, "I got that phone call."

A doctor friend from California was on the line with a suggestion: You want to do something about Obamacare? Why not run for Lautenberg’s empty seat?

Two months later, Eck, 62, who had never considered running for any kind of political office, is the true upstart in this year's special election for the U.S. Senate. The latest poll for Tuesday's primary for the Republican nomination puts her 64 points behind former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan, a guy who's usually the one running as an underdog.

"I didn’t contemplate, ‘Is this reasonable? Is this possible?’ " she said last week after speaking to a crowd of about two dozen Morris County Republicans at the Stirling American Legion. "I just thought, I could be a good senator, so I’m going to try.’"

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NEW JERSEY'S SPECIAL U.S. SENATE RACE

Profiles of each candidate:

• Cory Booker

• Alieta Eck

• Rush Holt

• Steve Lonegan

• Sheila Oliver

• Frank Pallone

Eck — who smiles and softly laughs when she talks and delivers speeches in a calm, conversational manner — cobbled together a campaign with not much financing and little time to spread her message to New Jersey voters who had never heard of her.

Bret Schundler — the former Jersey City mayor, gubernatorial candidate and state education commissioner — is one of Eck’s supporters, calling her a "more positive personality" than Lonegan.

"She cares about whether policies work or not," Schundler said. "Sometimes people ignore whether policies actually work."

Born in Orange, Eck grew up in Union Township and graduated from Rutgers University’s pharmacy school in 1974. That’s where she met fellow pharmacy student John Eck, marrying him in their final year on campus.

"We went to medical school with the idea of becoming missionaries," she said. "We did our first two years of medical school in Guadalajara, Mexico, and started a clinic there as medical students."

After completing their studies at the St. Louis University School of Medicine in 1980, Eck recalled, she and her husband were told they needed to pay off medical school debt before going abroad.

The couple moved back to New Jersey, and eventually opened a private practice in Piscataway in 1988. They raised five children in their Franklin Township home, and over the years had all four grandparents living there, as well. "We chose to stay in Somerset and start a free clinic there instead," Eck explained.

The Ecks don’t accept insurance at their Piscataway office. Patients pay out of pocket. An average visit costs $80. "It’s less than taking your car to Jiffy Lube, frankly," she said.

The policy at the forefront of Eck’s platform is Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which she says her husband called "the big, 800-pound gorilla that’s about to smother the country" while encouraging her to run.

Eck said many conservatives want to repeal the law, but most simply slam it without offering ways to fix it. "I’ve lived the solution for 10 years," she said. "I know all the ins and outs of it."

Alieta Eck, 62, poses in her office in Piscataway.

The Ecks opened the free clinic in 2003 on the campus of their church, the Pillar of Fire, in Franklin Township’s Zarephath community. They run it without government involvement.

It sits in a nondescript, gray trailer — which the church lets them use for $1 a year — off a rural, two-lane road. Pharmaceutical and medical companies donate medicine, equipment and clothes. Some people give donations in a box at the counter. Doctors, nurses and staff volunteer their time. The Ecks donate six hours apiece each week.

Patients can get examinations and dental work for free. Some are out of work, some just released from psychiatric hospitals, others young mothers who can’t afford medicine.

"Most people taking on a new thing, they want to get things done," said Brian Levine, Franklin’s mayor and one of the first officials to endorse Eck. "She did all that before she even considered running for office."

Eck said clinics like this are needed because few doctors accept Medicaid, the federal government’s health care program for low-income citizens, because they are overwhelmed and not paid enough. "It’s all bureaucracy and paperwork and fraud," she said.

Democratic leaders say health care reform will help citizens obtain affordable coverage, but Eck said the law is terrifying because it expands Medicaid. That, she said, will lead to more debt and cost taxpayers more.

Eck wants to keep the federal government out of health care. Patients who can afford it would pay out of pocket for most visits and use high-deductible insurance for major issues. Free clinics like hers could treat those who can’t afford insurance, and doctors would volunteer four hours a week in exchange for medical malpractice protection from the government for their private practices. Eck calls it "real charity."

"Alieta’s got a very compassionate heart," her husband said. "You see what you get. People told us, ‘They’re going to find skeletons.’ You don’t understand. She doesn’t have skeletons. She doesn’t even have a closet."

In 2011, she testified against Obama’s plans for reform at a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing, invited by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, an eye doctor and member of the conservative Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Eck was the group’s president last year, and says Paul and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas are her role models. "They came from the private sector and moved into the Senate," she said. "And they’re making a difference."

But name recognition is a problem. Robert Yudin, chairman of Bergen County Republican Organization, said he and other Republicans support Lonegan because he spent years building a reputation and a following.

"None of us heard of her at all," Yudin said. "She just came out of the woodwork and said, ‘I’m running.’ "

Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University, said Eck has another disadvantage: New Jersey’s "bifurcated media market."

"In order to gain name recognition, you have to get on TV in New York and Philadelphia," Harrison said. "That’s a very significant challenge for someone entering the political arena — especially without money."

Eck has tried to change that with a grassroots campaign, speaking at picnics, rallies, candidate forums and county fairs.

And she stresses she’s more than "the health care candidate," with views that have gotten her backing from libertarians and tea party leaders.

She strongly supports shrinking the size of government. She is anti-abortion, saying Americans have "gotten more and more callous toward life." She is against gay marriage, saying government shouldn’t be "redefining something that has been in existence for the past two or 3,000 years." She supports gun rights, saying, "The purpose of the Constitution is to defend our liberties."

Lonegan has all but ignored Eck on the campaign trail, attacking his possible Democratic opponents instead. Eck believes that’s a mistake.

"He will get creamed by the Democrat," she said. "See: I think I can win. Because I can trump any Democrat in my ability to care for the poor. Which they claim to do and don’t. The way they care for the poor harms them. I could articulate that."

RELATED COVERAGE

• Lonegan, Eck share similar views in U.S. Senate Republican primary debate

• The wild card: Alieta Eck eyes health care reform as a long-shot U.S. Senate candidate

• Complete coverage of the 2013 special U.S. Senate election

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