EDITORIAL: Frelinghuysen — again — in the 11th
Give Mark Dunec a little credit. The Democratic challenger in the 11th Congressional District has the nearly impossible task of trying to unseat Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen from his seat on Capitol Hill. But he comes to the table with ideas, actual plans to try to reach real goals in job growth, immigration reform and on other issues.
It's a refreshing attempt. Other Democrats have come and gone before him along Frelinghuysen's path, mostly sacrificial lambs who served as ballot filler. Good luck remembering their names without looking them up, and good luck remembering much of anything about them once you find those names.
That's not so much a knock on the candidates themselves as an acknowledgement of Frelinghuysen's district omnipotence. Frelinghuysen hails from a prominent family in a district that has long remained staunchly Republican. Frelinghuysen was first elected to Congress in 1994, and challengers haven't come close since.
So this seat is practically a birthright for Frelinghuysen. What's a poor Democrat to do?
In Dunec's case, he's got some big-picture thoughts to share. Want to address immigration reform and the future of Social Security in one fell swoop? Dunec would secure our borders and grant green cards to every undocumented worker already in this country. Millions of people would suddenly be legalized and start paying Social Security taxes. Two problems "solved."
Unfortunately Dunec's plan doesn't quite hold up when he can't even explain what would then happen to the next illegal immigrants who come here. "We'll figure that out," is Dunec's response. That applies to some of his other ideas as well. He wants to entirely eliminate the corporate tax, for instance, as a means to spur job growth, but at the same time he wants to compensate for those lost tax revenues by forcing businesses to distribute a certain percentage of profits as dividends and tax those. If the numbers don't entirely add up, Dunec's ready to work out the details in Washington.
Dunec is a smart businessman, and he isn't making the mistake that so many other novice candidates do, settling for a series of generic platitudes that fit their party's profile. But the mere creation of specifics isn't enough; they have to make sense, and have some practical chance of succeeding.
Frelinghuysen may have to do little more than roll his name out there, but he does put in the effort with his man-of-the-people style. He is a visible presence in the community — most of it without any fanfare — and doesn't seem to take his seat for granted, as easy as it would be for him to do so. In Washington he is chairman of the Defense Appropriations Committee, which puts him in a uniquely powerful spot to assist and protect one of Morris County's largest civilian employers, the Picatinny Arsenal.
Frelinghuysen mostly toes the line of a moderate Republican agenda, and if that alone is a deal-breaker for a voter, they may look to Dunec as a default option. But it isn't fair to dismiss Frelinghuysen as nothing more than the product of an unassailable demographic advantage. Frelinghuysen has been a quality representative of the 11th District, and deserves re-election.
The 11th Congressional District is centered primarily in Morris County.