Republican New Jersey state Senate candidate and truck driver Ed Durr is on the verge of defeating longtime Senate President Steve Sweeney in a sweeping victory that would upend Democratic Party leadership in the Garden State.
The 62-year-old Raymour & Flanagan truck driver holds a lead of more than 2,000 votes in a tight race for the state’s Third District Senate seat.
REPUBLICAN TRUCK DRIVER RUNNING AGAINST LONGTIME DEM, SWEENEY
“I didn’t beat him. We beat him,” Durr said on “Fox News Primetime” late Wednesday. “The state of New Jersey, the people of New Jersey beat him. They listened to what I had to say and I listened to what they had to say, and it’s a repudiation of Governor Murphy [who] went and locked us down and ignored the people’s voice and senator Sweeney chose to do nothing for those 18 months,” he said.
New Jersey state Senate candidate Edward Durr
(Ed Durr campaign )
Durr reportedly spent under $5,000 on his general election campaign. His campaign video was filmed on an iPhone by the nephew of a good friend, he said.
His victory proves that ” you cannot tell people they can’t have a job. You can’t tell people they can’t go to church,” he told host Rachel Campos-Duffy. “And that’s what was done. And there was nothing done by the legislature, so this was the people’s voice being made heard clear.”
Durr said he felt compelled to run against Sweeney over frustrations stemming from the state’s coronavirus response and lockdowns, which had a crippling impact on employment in the state.
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Asked what he plans to do on his first day as Senate president, Durr said, “I really don’t know.”
“That’s the key factor. I don’t know what I don’t know, but I will learn what I need to know,” he vowed, “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.”