In his Senate run against Cory Booker, Republican Jeff Bell is doing nothing the experts tell you a candidate should do — and everything they say you shouldn’t.
But here’s the extraordinary thing: He continues to close the gap against a man who is supposed to be “unbeatable.”
One thing’s for sure: Bell is confounding the experts. A recent New York Times-CBS poll has Bell within seven points of Booker. That’s an improvement over a mid-June Rasmussen poll that put the gap between Bell and Booker at 13 points.
Here are just some of the reasons this race shouldn’t be close:
- It’s been more than three decades since Bell last ran for office in New Jersey.
- He’s lived out-of-state for most of the years since.
- He’s a Republican in a blue state.
- He has almost no cash, against a war chest of nearly $3 million for Booker.
- He’s campaigning on monetary policy, trying to make it a populist issue, for example, by blaming high costs for working- and middle-class families on the weak dollar. He says the Fed’s policies have meant a transfer of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street — whose campaign dollars go to his rival, incumbent Sen. Booker.
Given that the campaign is moving in his direction against all odds, we’re not about to tell Jeff Bell what to do next. Today he plans to lead a “Street Protest Against Harry Reid” in Cherry Hill, where Reid will be appearing on behalf of a Democratic candidate for the House.
Maybe Reid should stop by. If things keep going the way they are, come November they might be colleagues.