Holt: A calculated challenge to Booker in Senate race

Martha T. Moore | USA TODAY

FREEHOLD, N.J. — As an astrophysicist, Rep. Rush Holt could probably calculate the exact odds of a meteor happening to land on Newark Mayor Cory Booker. Since Booker leads Holt by more than 40 points in opinion polls, he might even have already done the math. But Holt is figuring on another way to win New Jersey's race for the Senate.

The Democratic primary Aug. 13 will be a special election held at the height of vacation season with only one race on the ballot. That will be "a great leveler,'' Holt says.

Statewide name recognition "is not irrelevant but not particularly important,'' says Holt, who has represented central New Jersey since 1999. "I don't think the fact that they've seen Cory on Ellen Degeneres is going to motivate them to go to the poll.''

In other words, Booker has a national name and 1.4 million Twitter followers, but they aren't all going to come home from the beach to vote for him. In a race that's a recipe for low turnout, a seven-term congressman has as much ability to get his voters to the polls as a city mayor, Holt says.

"The victory will go not to the person with the greatest name recognition, who is clearly Cory Booker, but rather to the person who has the deepest support,'' he says. "The strongest support, not the broadest support, and the best organization.''

That's the theory, at least. "If there were ever a primary where he could (beat Booker), this is it,'' says Jean Holtz, who works for a non-profit development corporation and greeted Holt as he campaigned at a festival here. "Cory has a name, but I don't think he knows how to run a statewide organization.''

Booker, however, has plenty of friends who might, including top Democratic power broker George Norcross in southern New Jersey, far from Booker's Newark base. He has 11 field offices to Holt's two. He also has $6.5 million, according to Federal Election Commission filings, compared with $1.1 million for Holt. Rep. Frank Pallone, who is also running in the primary, has raised $3.5 million and opened six field offices. (A fourth candidate, Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, has not filed a fundraising report.)

New Jersey candidates have to raise enough money to buy airtime on New York and Philadelphia TV, and only Booker has aired ads. Holt's ads have been on the Web, though he says he plans "a full media program.'' The ads hammer on Holt's background as a scientist, teacher and generally very smart guy – he worked at Princeton University's plasma physics lab before being elected to Congress, and in 2011, he won a round of Jeopardy! against an IBM supercomputer.

His bumper stickers read, "My congressman is a rocket scientist.'' He tosses around words such as "eutrophication,'' the explosion of algae that happens in your park lake when your congressman can't get an earmark to pay for dredging. He has endorsements from quarters as diverse as the Sussex County Democratic Committee, where he won a straw poll last week, to Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian writer who published stories based on leaked NSA documents.

New Jersey voters value scientists, Holt says, pointing to the state's history as a center of pharmaceuticals and telecoms. "This is still the state of Edison and Einstein." (Edison's lab was in West Orange and Einstein lived in Princeton.)

He supports cutting the student loan rate to the Fed bank loan rate, voted against reauthorizing the Patriot Act and wants to rein in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act courts. He has proposed a tax on computerized stock trades. Asking him to differentiate himself from Booker makes him bristle. "I have a record of accomplishment. It's not rhetoric, it's accomplishment. There's a lot more that I've actually done than said.''

And, he adds, "I tweet in moderation. I tweet when I have something to say.'' (Although he did recently tweet a picture of himself getting a haircut. It was a plug for his barber, he says, not a dig at Booker, who is bald and mentions the fact regularly in his own tweets.)

Working the crowd at the All Seasons Restaurant, the first of four retail stops on a hot Saturday, Holt meets several voters who plan to support him – about 8% of state Democrats, according to last week's Monmouth University poll. Until 2011, Holt represented Freehold – and many of the diner's customers talk to him like he still does.

"I like Cory Booker very much, but Rush Holt represented us,'' says Stacy Gallin of Manalapan, having brunch with her husband, Stuart, and their two little boys. "There is something to be said for having a personal connection.''

Holt leaves the diner on an upbeat note. "This might lead somebody to question the polling (indicating), 'Oh don't you know everybody's going to vote for Cory Booker,' " he says, "This isn't even my district.''