Bangladesh Chronicle endorses Rush Holt for Congress.

Rush Holt is a serious politician who voted against Iraq war when it was not popular to do so. He is one of the most trustworthy Congressman who will protect your interests including the interests of the minorities. You can talk to him and he listens and does things. Bangladeshi-Americans and the South Asian-Americans should vote and also campaign for him.

Asbury Park Press

The voters of New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District are faced with as stark a choice in candidates as they have seen in some time.

The incumbent, Democrat Rush Holt, is, by any standard, a liberal standard-bearer and has been for the past dozen years he’s been in Congress. Scott Siprelle, his Republican challenger, formerly a managing director at Morgan Stanley and now head of Westland Ventures, a Princeton-based investment firm, is so far right as to be off the charts.

Holt, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is an eminently decent, bright man who has represented his district well and should be returned to Washington. Holt, who was assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and taught at Swarthmore College before entering Congress, helped create the New Jersey Technology Center to build jobs.

Holt’s support for the health care reform bill will help stop insurance companies from putting lifetime limits on what they will pay for care, prevent them from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions and expand coverage to the uninsured. He voted for legislation making certain that property taxes can be deducted from one’s income taxes. And his support for the environment is long-standing.

Siprelle offers little more than current GOP/Tea Party talking points — or, rather, a single talking point: saying “No!” to every Democratic initiative over the last two years without offering much in the way of new ideas. He seems to long for a return to the policies that led the country into the Great Recession, including extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. And when he does come up with ideas, they are nonstarters.

For those suffering the effects of the poor economy — the unemployed, for example — Siprelle offers this suggestion on his campaign website: “Set the level of unemployment benefits at a modest discount to the minimum wage so that no one receives more for not working than they do for working. This will accelerate the adjustment of laid-off workers to the reality of today’s labor markets” — as if the only thing that will get the unemployed back to work is cutting their unemployment checks.

Siprelle constantly attacks Holt as being “out of touch” with his constituents. This criticism is almost laughable, coming as it does from a Wall Street wheeler-dealer — one who believes health insurers should be allowed to refuse to insure those with pre-existing conditions and that the federal government has no role in education policy.

Independent candidate Kenneth J. Cody, running on an amorphous platform based on election finance reform, promoting bipartisanship and “fixing the economy,” clearly is not ready to become a member of Congress.

Holt deserves to be returned to Washington.