New Jersey politics are a mess. Chris Christie left the governor’s office stinking of corruption. Sen. Bob Menendez will seek re-election in November, less than a year after a hung jury declined to acquit him of bribery charges; a repeat trial is in the offing.
Menendez is among the least popular senators in the country, with an approval rating of 29 percent. He’s likely to be re-elected anyway, because New Jersey’s Republican Party is in shambles. Christie left office as the least popular governor in the country, with an approval rating of 19 percent. He won re-election in 2013 with 60 percent of the vote. His lieutenant governor and two-time running mate, Kim Guadagno, lost her race to replace him with just 42 percent of the vote.
New Jersey is a fundamentally blue state, and that 18-point swing was, in part, a return to form—Jersey hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988, and hasn’t elected a Republican senator since 1972. This makes the GOP even less likely to mount a serious challenge to Menendez.
Likewise, the national political situation: Democrats lead Republicans in the national generic ballot by 7.8 percentage points, according to the RealClearPolitics Average. That gap has tightened since the tax reform bill passed, but a generic Democrat lead of any size makes a New Jersey upset that much more improbable. The Senate election schedule is also conducive to national Republicans ignoring the Garden State in the midterms: Democrats are defending 10 seats in states that voted for Donald Trump, meaning New Jersey is—at best—the 11th most attractive destination for the GOP’s finite quantity of campaign dollars.
Taken together, all of this means that – despite Menendez’s outstanding weakness -- it’s only a matter of time before Republicans settle on some sacrificial nonentity to run against him, and focus instead on the races they have a reasonable chance of winning.
Does this mean New Jerseyites must accept another term for Menendez? Not necessarily. There may be a way to oust him -- it just won’t be the Republicans who do the ousting. The Libertarian Party ought to take a stab at Menendez’s seat. And their candidate ought to be Alan Dershowitz.
“Madness,” you say. Let me explain.
The libertarian platform is aggressively pro-free market, pro-small government and pro-individualism. It believes that property rights and gun rights are sacrosanct. Dershowitz, on the other hand, is a lifelong Democrat. But he isn’t a run-of-the-mill Democrat. He’s a member of a rare breed of originalist Democrats who oppose judicial activism and defend the inalienability of even the least trendy constitutional rights. He voted for Hillary Clinton in ’16 and prefers Joe Biden in 2020, but has on several occasions come to Trump’s philosophical aid. He defended the legality of Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director Jim Comey. He defended the legality of Trump’s travel ban. He’s defended Trump’s allegations of bias in the FBI’s Russia investigation, and he’s attacked the left for trying to delegitimize Trump’s presidency through innuendo and tele-psychiatry.
Dershowitz told Politico that he’s lost seven pounds since finding himself forced to defend Trump. He says his liberal friends don’t invite him to dinner anymore. No doubt John Adams had a similar experience when he agreed to defend the British soldiers who killed five Americans at the Boston Massacre. (That sounds hyperbolic—and it is—but really, does the half of the country that hates Trump hate him less than Colonial Boston hated those soldiers?)
Said Adams of his legal philosophy: “Facts are stubborn things—and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” I can’t think of any other reason an opinion-maker of Dershowitz’s caliber would risk his community standing the way he has. And this is what brings him in line with the libertarians.
Dershowitz may not be a fiscal libertarian, but he is perhaps the country’s most articulate civil libertarian. He is outspoken in his displeasure with college censorship and “safe spaces.” He attacks liberals for harassing anti-abortion activists, even though he himself is pro-choice. He insists on speaking in defense of Israel, even when he’s forced to use armed guards to safely deliver that defense. He is an unwavering devotee of the natural rights on which this country was founded, and has repeatedly refused to cut his conscience to fit the latest fashions. This, even more than the Austrian school of economics, is the essence of libertarianism.
Obviously, Dershowitz’s politics will not satisfy the hard-line libertarian. But neither did Gary Johnson’s, whose libertarianism didn’t extend much further than legalizing marijuana. Libertarians compromised and made Johnson their presidential nominee because they hoped his experience as governor of New Mexico would make him a viable candidate. They were wrong; no one realized in advance of his campaign just how goofy and unserious Johnson was. But in Dershowitz, libertarians would actually be giving voters an attractive third-party option. One, I might add, who has considerable built-in name recognition. The practical libertarian should resolve himself: Bill of Rights first, Milton Friedman second. (Isolationism never. But that’s an argument for the next platform conference.)
Dershowitz’s personal liberalism would appeal to the many New Jersey Democrats turned off by Bob Menendez. Dershowitz’s integrity in defending Trump and his full-throated support for personal rights would appeal to the many Republicans turned off by Chris Christie. The 72,477 New Jerseyites who voted libertarian in the last presidential election would break into the mainstream. And the national Libertarian Party — which has half a million members, and ginned up 4.5 million votes in the 2016 presidential election — would finally have a top-flight spokesman for several important planks in its platform.
On a more practical note — libertarians aren’t going to succeed if they continue to pursue a “50 state” policy. They can’t afford to divide their resources 50 ways. They need to choose one consequential election, one that they have a legitimate chance of winning, and throw everything they have at it. Everything they have would then be compounded by their new aura of viability among libertarian donors, of whom there are many (the Kochs leap to mind).
Of course, I’m just spit-balling here. I’ve never met Dershowitz. I have no idea if he has any interest in running for office. Though he has been on TV a lot lately — he’s no shrinking violet. Far-fetched as this may be, is it further-fetched than getting an acquittal for O.J.? I think not.
Dershowitz for New Jersey, 2018.