It’s Official: Conservative Truck Driver Edward Durr Defeats NJ Democrat State Senate President

The Associated Press has called the race for New Jersey’s State Senate District 3 for Republican truck driver Edward Durr, who has stunned the political world by defeating State Senate President Steve Sweeney by 2,298 votes, or nearly 4%.

The call came on Thursday, two days after an off-year election that saw Republicans sweep many races, including the race for governor of Virginia. The GOP nearly won the governor’s race in New Jersey, too, which few expected to be competitive.

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News on Wednesday, Durr said that he won because of a “perfect storm” in the state that resulted from severe coronavirus restrictions that saw the governor and the Democrats interfere with families’ basic rights:

“The main issue was rights,” Durr said, via phone. “People talk about how New Jersey has the highest taxes, and we’re the worst state for business, with high debt, and so on, but bottom line is rights. It’s family.

“When somebody’s messing with your family, you’ll do anything,” he said. “The governor was messing with people’s families. When you mess with somebody’s job, their livelihood, their home, their children — people just won’t take that.”

Sweeney had refused to debate Durr during the campaign, reportedly laughing at Durr when he challenged him.

Durr ran a bare-bones campaign that cost less than $10,000. He walked door-to-door with volunteers after work, and did not even have a website outside Facebook.

Sweeney had been the longest-serving legislative leader in the history of the state.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.