Both Physicists Keep Their Congressional Seats

Both Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey and Bill Foster of Illinois won their election and will continue to represent their district (and physics) at the US Congress. Bill Foster will get to serve a full term as a congressman after winning the previous election to replace Hastert for a few months.

Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) easily won re-election to his sixth term in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, garnering 62 percent of votes in New Jersey’s 12th district. His opponent Alan Bateman, deputy mayor of Holmdel Township, received 36 percent.

Holt, whose district includes the University, was the assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory prior to winning his seat for the first time in 1998. In defeating Republican Congressman Mike Pappas in that election, he became the first Democrat in 20 years to represent his district.

University voters showed strong support for Holt. Roughly 79 percent of voters in Princeton Borough District 1 and Township District 12, where voters are predominantly University undergraduates, supported Holt.

Democratic Congressman Bill Foster will keep the formerly GOP seat he won earlier this year in a special election.

Foster beat Republican businessman Jim Oberweis in Illinois' 14th Congressional District in the race to hang on to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert's old district.

With 65 percent of precincts reporting, Foster had 57 percent and Oberweis had 43 percent.

Foster is a Geneva physicist who first went to Washington in March after beating Oberweis in a special election to fill the remainder of Hastert's term after he retired.

We still have only 3 physicists in the US Congress.

Edit: Of course, I unfortunately left out Vern Ehlers, who won his reelection in Michigan. So all three physicists got through to another term in Congress.

Zz.