House, Senate Races Enter Final Day

"My Congressman IS a Rocket Scientist."

The bumper stickers refer to Rush Holt, a Ph.D. physicist who served for 11 years as assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, the University's largest research lab. Holt, who was a five-time "Jeopardy!" champion, is widely reputed to be one of the brainiest members of Congress.

A Democrat, Holt represents the Princeton area in the House of Representatives and is favored to be reelected for a third term Tuesday. During an interview last week, he offered his views on a wide range of campus issues. He emphasized his pro-choice convictions, offered his thoughts on the campus divestment campaign and explained his reasons for voting against the bill that authorized President Bush to attack Iraq.

McCosh Health Center covers the cost of abortions for students, using the student health plan fees collected at the beginning of each school year. Pro-life students have said they do not want their health plan fees used to fund the procedure. The University's chief medical officer Daniel Silverman has said he understands student concerns but thinks it would be difficult to let students in general opt out of funding medical procedures to which they object.

Holt agreed that changing the way abortions are funded at the University would be a bad idea.

"I suppose you can have different health plans for different amounts of money, but within a university it is always better to have standard coverage," he said. "Abortions are legal. It's not something to be desired or encouraged, but it's a woman's choice."

Holt said he does not support the campus divestment movement, whose members want the University to sell its investments in companies doing business in Israel.

"I think it's not very constructive," he said. "This would punish Israel in a one-sided way. Placing blame solely on Israel for the current situation, I think, is unfair. No less than the Palestinians, Israel has a right to exist free from violence. There is blame on both sides.

"The United States has not done all we can and should do to help bring an end to violence there and work out a peaceful solution," he added. "I certainly sympathize with the concern for the plight of the Palestinians."

Divestment advocates liken the Israeli government to apartheid in South Africa. In the 1980s, student pressure led the University to sell some of its investments in South Africa as a protest of that country's racist policies. But Holt said he does not agree with the analogy.

"I think Israel is not South Africa. Israel today is not the South Africa of 20 years ago," he said.

Holt voted against the Oct. 10 House resolution that authorized President Bush to take unilateral military action in Iraq.

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"What the President has been proposing to do, a unilateral invasion of Iraq, would be more likely to cause what it's designed to prevent," he said.

He pointed to CIA analyses that concluded a U.S. attack would increase the chance that Iraq will choose to use its weapons of mass destruction.

"I cannot think of a single international interest that the U.S. has

. . . that wouldn't be made more difficult by what the president is proposing to do," Holt said. "It's not just about Iraq. The president has made clear that he sees this as the first example of his new doctrine of preemptive war."

Holt also drew attention to an alternative war resolution, which he did support, that would have permitted the president to use military force in Iraq if it were authorized by the United Nations.

"I have had intelligence briefings from the CIA, the [Defense Intelligence Agency and] the Secretary of Defense himself," Holt said. "There is no evidence that we don't have time" to act multilaterally.

Holt said if the U.N. proves unable or unwilling to disarm Saddam through cooperative, multinational efforts, then he will be prepared to consider supporting unilateral U.S. action.

"The use of war should indeed be a last resort," he said.

Voting against the Iraq resolution has been considered a politically risky move for many elected officials.

For Holt, though, the vote had a major benefit. His opposition to war got the attention of MoveOn.org, a political website originally created to dissuade Congress from impeaching President Clinton.

The site's organizers, who send an email newsletter to hundreds of thousands of liberal voters, appealed for donations to Holt's campaign. Readers of the newsletter donated more than $170,000, mostly in small individual pledges.

Holt said it was personal conviction, rather than the prospect of campaign donations or the views of his constituents, that led him to oppose the Iraq resolution.

"I'm comfortable with my vote," he said. "In some political sense it was a hard vote because, yeah, I know how to read polls, but I couldn't have done otherwise. It was a very clear vote for me."