Against the odds, Republican Jay Webber holds on in New Jersey

Jay Webber shouldn’t just be losing, he should be losing badly. But against the odds, and against the current of national politics, the New Jersey Republican is hanging on in the kind of race that Democrats have to win in order to retake the House.

A state assemblyman and Harvard-educated lawyer, Webber is running to fill the seat of retiring Republican Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen. The race in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District is a ready-made microcosm of all the national factors that favor Democrats over Republicans.