After four years out of public office, it appears Dick Zimmer will move back to Washington as residents of New Jersey's 12th Congressional District elected him to a fourth term in the House in a dead-heat race won by a margin of fewer than 800 votes.
Zimmer — a former lecturer at the Wilson School — narrowly defeated the Democratic incumbent freshman representative Rush Holt by 731 votes in a race where nearly 280,000 residents went to the polls, according to preliminary counts. At the current tally, a recount is possible.
Both parties launched campaign efforts on a nationwide scale for the two candidates, making the election one of the most contentious races in the country. And as Democrats and Republicans alike scrambled to lay claim to an advantage in the House, national media attention turned to New Jersey.
The two parties rose to the challenge, sending party leaders like President Clinton and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) to stump in the district.
The Republican party targeted the 12th district as being in "play" because of Holt's narrow 1 percent victory over conservative then-Rep. Mike Pappas in a race immediately following President Clinton's impeachment in 1998.
In the 1998 election, Holt — former assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory — flooded the television networks in the final weeks with an image of Pappas celebrating Clinton's impeachment and praising Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.
Zimmer had held the 12th District seat from 1991 to 1997 but made an unsuccessful bid in the 1996 Senate race against Democrat Robert Toricelli.
Traditionally, the district — which has 700,000 residents spread across five suburban counties — votes Republican, but Democrats viewed Holt's upset victory two years ago as a glimmer of hope. Pappas' anti-abortion and anti-gun control views proved too far to the right to secure more moderate voters in that area.
And in this race — where the bulk of the voters are registered as Independents — both campaigns catered to that moderate voter. The race remained neck-and-neck in the final weeks of the contest. Each candidate raised approximately $2 million to fund television ads that aired on both New York City and Philadelphia networks to snag the final few votes in an election political pundits saw going down to the wires.
Holt and Zimmer both echo their party's presidential candidates on most issues. Zimmer, it seems, will return to Congress as a moderate Republican much like apparent President-Elect George W. Bush.
Zimmer favors a tax cut to return part of the surplus to the constituents, while Holt hoped to use the surplus to shore up Social Security and Medicare.
An official at the Zimmer campaign said yesterday he believed McCain's Sunday visit helped garner support from voters who focused on campaign finance reform and special-interest spending.
Zimmer wants to make the public school system more accountable through student and teacher testing, while Holt favored an increase in public funding for education.
Both candidates have extensive records on the environment while in the House, working to pass legislation to repurchase open land.
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