Last edited Tue Jun 4, 2013, 10:10 AM - Edit history (1)
I was lucky enough to see Lautenberg a couple of times. The most memorable was at a Democratic Morris County meeting when he was working to insure that Menendez would win in 2006. Morris County is the most Republican county in the state - so this was a relatively small 50 - 100 people event.
After his formal GOTV speech, he just talked to everyone. The most telling conversation was when one couple said that they were from Paterson and the husband's parents knew his family back in the old days. He recognized the name and then started to talk about Patterson and that time. He spoke of the reason he got into politics - and that was to fight for people who could not. He told us that his dad, who worked in a Patterson silk factory told him to study hard and that he did not want him to work there because it killed people. His dad spoke of being able to see filaments in the air and made the connection between breathing all that in and the early deaths. His dad died quite young and Lautenberg went to college on the GI bill. You could see that he was still passionate on so many of the things he fought for.
I also remember watching on TV when various Democrats, including Kerry and Hillary, along with affected citizens spoke of the importance of Social Security and all that it did. This was in 2005 or 2006 whenever Bush was briefly pushing to privatize it. The clear "stars" of the show and the most compelling were Lautenberg and a Brooklyn guy near his age. They were completely awesome in speaking of what SS provided. At the end of the show when they were speaking to each other - Lautenberg spoke of how they would not have had to worry had the country done right and elected JK as they should have. It was clear that they had a huge amount of respect for each other.
He was awesome in 2004 - especially when he called Dick Cheney a chicken hawk.
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