July 3, 2001

12:01 PM

Trouble for New Jersey GOP candidate...A candidate's nightmare: a person jumps into the race whose name sounds like theirs? A week after the conservative mayor of Jersey City, Bret Shundler, surprised the experts by winning the GOP primary for governor, it's now clear that a state senator named Schluter will also run as an independent, draining votes from Republicans and, IMHO, delivering the New Jersey statehouse to the Democrats. Schluter is a quirky gadfly at best -- but this is a state where 10-20,000 votes can decide an election.
posted by brucec (4 comments total)

Would these people who don't know their preferred candidate's name be intelligent enough to form well thought-out opinions about each of the candidates?
posted by gyc at 2:47 PM on July 3, 2001

Shundler's name will be in column one or two, with this new guy out in right field somewhere. That's not very confusing unless you are the village idiot, and there are a few of those.
posted by NJguy at 4:49 AM on July 4, 2001

Voters don't select the independent candidate by accident. NJguy is right ... the independent column is far removed from the big party columns. And we're talking about Jersey here, not Palm Beach.
posted by PD Susan at 9:05 AM on July 4, 2001

His name is signficant, but I also neglected to add he comes from a Republican area (Pennington, NJ) where he is fairly popular. Even the local favorite son votes could be enough to hurt Schundler.
posted by brucec at 6:30 PM on July 4, 2001