New Jersey Rep. Rush Holt — who is mulling a run for the Senate seat of retiring Frank Lautenberg — said he’s confident he can win the Garden State if he throws his hat in the ring.
“I do think I can do some good in the Senate,’’ Holt told Steve Malzberg on Newsmax TV’s “The Steve Malzberg Show.’’
“I do think that with my electoral record being able to win with margins that I’ve won with the kind of districts that I’ve had, I guess I could win statewide. I believe it.’’
Holt — a Democrat who was first elected to Congress in 1999 representing New Jersey’s 12th District — has eyed the senate for years and has always said he would consider it “at the right time.’’
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But, Holt — whose father, Rush Holt Sr., served as a West Virginia senator from 1935-1941 — added: “To express interest is not the same thing as a campaign announcement.’’
Succeeding Lautenberg, he suggested, will be a big job.
“He’s a real hard worker, he doesn’t give up; he’s persistent. He has stopped not only smoking on airplanes but he set new standards for blood alcohol level, drunk driving,’’ Holt said.
“You could fill an entire stadium of people who are alive today because of Frank Lautenberg and they don’t know it. They don’t know who they are. But there are that many people out there.’’
Holt, who has a doctorate in physics and has worked at Princeton University, was asked by Malzberg about the giant meteor that slammed into Russia, injuring 1,100 people.
“It packs a lot of energy. So in fact it explodes with the force of a small atomic bomb, probably,’’ Holt said. “There’s tons of material that rains down on the Earth but most of it is dust particles … grains of sand.
“You see a shooting star at night; it’s just a tiny pebble usually. But it has so much energy at that speed that it makes a spectacular show for a split second.’’
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