OPINION
“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.” — Dr. Seuss
Larry Poster ended his campaign for Congress Tuesday night June 2 when the returns came in the way his campaign began, with a whimper. In between it was an amazing journey. Though arguably personal and anecdotal, my campaign offered me a glimpse of America and unexpected insight as to where we may be in this fragile moment of our democracy.
I launched my campaign in the brutal dead cold of winter collecting signatures sufficient to make it onto the ballot. Once on the ballot, campaigning again, I personally met and had conversations with several hundred voters and others in NJ’s 10th Congressional District. As when I was earlier collecting petition signatures, several conversations were heated. All were brief. But even from brief conversations, I had overarching takeaways. More than any other, one conversation stood out which I will never forget.
In my encounters, I found:
1) That fully a third of all people I met didn’t give a “fig” about politics. Quite a few more couldn’t yet vote. Of the latter, a few were on their way to citizenship and hoped to vote “soon.”
2) A few MAGA types were former Democrats, but whether former Democrats or not, all MAGA’s I met would never forgive Democrats for “ruining” America.
3) A few disgusted, former MAGA voters, though still not fully convinced nor re-embracing the Democratic Party, nonetheless overwhelmingly indicated they’d likely vote Democrat, at least for coming election cycle.
4) Surprising or not, the vast majority of people I met had no idea who any candidate running in the Primary was – for any office; nearly 100% did not know any down-ballot candidates.
5) My most unforgettable conversation and the one which moved me the most: A former felon I met didn’t know he had the right to vote. I told him in New Jersey as a former felon that his voting rights had been fully restored, that he absolutely had the right to vote and how to begin the registration process. He had no idea. When I met him, he and his girlfriend or spouse were enjoying an outdoor event together with others. On overhearing what I was saying, his girlfriend (or spouse) suddenly beamed. To me they both appeared thrilled, stunned – and proud. I was humbled. I had not anticipated the moment but saw immediately how much a difference I had made. How I had made their day.
6) Perhaps, my most important takeaway of all was that merely by looking that I couldn’t tell what category of political persuasion someone was (other than two or three people who literally wore it on their sleeves). Until engaging the person in front of me, I couldn’t tell whether she or he was liberal, conservative, in-between or something else. But once engaged, except for MAGA’s, almost everyone, Democrats especially, I discovered were middle-of-the-roaders.
7) One last, exceptionally important takeaway: that communities, local, county, and state governments do next to nothing, or nothing at all, to promote elections.
Want public enthusiasm? As a Government entity, create hoopla. Want greater participation in democracy and voting? Saturate airwaves with public interest messaging for mail-in voting, early voting and especially, Election Day voting. Flood mail. Put up signage, banners, even balloons (when possible), everywhere. Make every polling place widely known. Draw attention. Strike up the band. Make elections fun. Teach civics and the importance of elections in school.
Campaigning on the final day I discovered that even when searching for polling locations, even knowing their addresses, until one is on top of them, and sometimes not even then, that most polling places are nearly invisible.
In my campaign, I broadly ran as a centrist, but on social issues I ran as a progressive with a tinge of realism. I also ran stressing my fiscal prudence, and as an internationalist in what I believed to be in the mainstream American and Democratic tradition.
Through my website, www.PosterforCongress.com and by issuing more than a half-dozen News Releases, my entry on Ballotpedia, my responses to questions on NJ Spotlight News and in personally distributing my platform to Democrats in three Counties in NJ’s 10th Congressional District, I shared my positions on more than 20 consequential issues, including, but not only, the economy and affordability, democracy, immigration and security, rights, tax policy, social programs, AI, the Middle East and American International Leadership.
I proposed a potentially more practical path than the one we are on currently for vastly improving healthcare in America; for solving our gerrymandering dilemma; for incorporating Real ID with additional protections into election, immigration, healthcare and firearms control systems in order to introduce greater safety into and to reduce fraud and abuse from these critical systems of our country, and to radically improve implementation and use of them; and to building a green NYC Port Authority Bus Terminal / Northern NJ Bus System before it’s too late.
To my astonishment, with but a single exception and that very late in the day to be impactful, except for Ballotpedia and NJ Spotlight News’ questionnaire, neither of which received 2026 candidate input for the NJ 10 Congressional Democratic Primary but from me, no major media – print, online or broadcast – covered the Democratic June 2 Primary for U.S. Congress in New Jersey’s 10th CD, let alone provided a forum for a debate of ideas and candidates.
I wish LaMonica McIver my very best in her re-election as Representative in the 10th Congressional District of the great State of New Jersey.