The Volokh Conspiracy and all the other blogs in the world have already weighed in on the Jersey switcheroo, but it seems to me that they’ve all fairly well missed the point by focusing on the election law instead of the other legal and political tactics that Forrester would employ if he were worthy of serving in the United States Senate. For openers, let’s try and bear in mind that the Jersey law says that a party can play switcheroo 51 days before the election, but it never says it can’t also play switcheroo less than 51 days before the election; the first case is a conclusive presumption, and the latter is rebuttable. Forrester didn’t rebut.
Now if he had half a brain, he would have pointed out that the Democratic bait-and-switch cost him money and time, because he bought campaign ads and made campaign stops based on the good-faith assumption that the Torch was the candidate he had to beat. If he’d known all along that he was running against Lautenberg, he would have run a very different campaign, so at a minimum, the Torch needs to compensate him for the money he spent on his campaign. Torch has $5M in the bank, so this shouldn’t be too hard.
Finally, he should put some killer ads together where Torch plays Dr. Frankenstein, taking Lautenberg out of cryogenic suspension, laying him out on a table, and transfusing Torch blood into him by way of re-animating him. He can back that up with some don’t-look-at-that-man-behind-the-curtain ads where a robot Lautenberg is controlled by a demonic Torch at the controls.
The main thing is to relentlessly remind the voters that Jersey Democrats are sleaze-merchants who aren’t to be trusted. Maybe a Tony Soprano endorsement would help, too. But asking the Supreme Court to stick their necks out for him is a little bit much, and I’d have a hard time voting for him myself if that’s all he can come up with. The example of Ted Kennedy notwithstanding, a Senator should have some modicum of brain power, and Forrester’s not showing any.