Edward Durr, a 58-year-old truck driver, put less than $200 — half of which was spent at Dunkin’ Donuts — into a primary campaign and then went on to topple New Jersey’s longest-serving, most powerful state senator. His upset victory on Tuesday is one for the history books, and all he did was appeal to average, hard-working voters like him and remind them that they’re the ones in charge.
Durr’s campaign message was simple: New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney, who led the legislative upper chamber for 12 years, enabled Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s draconian coronavirus restrictions, which made life a lot worse for New Jersey’s residents. Jobs disappeared, and thousands of wealthy citizens left, leaving an economic mess for middle- and lower-class citizens.
https://twitter.com/kerpen/status/1455899165230354448?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwDurr’s other main point: Sweeney was the embodiment of New Jersey’s political establishment, a machine that exists only to serve itself.
“Just the constant nepotism, corruption, ‘if you take care of me, I’ll take care of you’ deals,” he told Politico. “You don’t have evidence. You can’t get anyone arrested or prove anything, but there’s always ‘when there’s smoke there’s fire’ kind of statements.”
That message was all it took. Durr shot his campaign video on his cellphone, spent less than $10,000 total on the campaign, and relied mostly on his family and friends to get his name out there. And on Tuesday night, he watched as the votes tallied up and realized he was ahead.
“I kept telling myself and telling people I was going to do it, but in the back of my mind, I was like, ‘You know, how am I going to beat the Senate president?’” Durr recalled.
Durr reiterated that he is not a politician; he’s never held elected office before. So, his first few months as a state senator will be a learning curve. But he made his constituents a promise:
“I don’t know what I don’t know, but I will learn what I need to know,” he told Fox News on Wednesday, “and I’m going to guarantee one thing. I will be the voice, and people will hear me because if there is one thing people will learn about me, I got a big mouth, and I don’t shut up when I want to be heard. I’m going to be heard.”
Durr’s victory proves something important: that normal people without Ivy League degrees and powerful connections can not only participate in government, but bend it to their will. The political machine that backed Sweeney was not all-powerful — a truck driver who began with a couple hundred dollars in his pocket broke it. And he did so by returning to the source of that machine’s power: the people.
It’s easy for voters to forget that they’re really the ones who hold the levers, especially in this day and age, when career politicians are often reelected without much effort. It’s easy for politicians to forget who’s really in charge, too. But Durr’s success is a reminder to both the government and the governed that power is not permanent and that the average citizen has just as much right to it as the elites.
