Unable to run on his record after forty years in office, including a failure to help New Jersey families deal with a simultaneous pandemic and economic collapse, Representative Smith has discovered a political attack that is almost as old as his last public town hall, although that was even longer ago (27 years and counting).

Twenty three years ago, I was a 16-year-old intern in Representative Smith’s office who was thrilled to have the opportunity to intern in Washington, D.C. with a Representative from my home state of New Jersey. My short time with his office was uneventful, but educational. He was obviously wrong on many issues then, as he is now, but I was happy for the opportunity to serve. At the conclusion of my internship, as my (then, but no longer) Republican mother taught me, I sent him a thank you note for the opportunity.

Now comes the strangest political attack in a year that’s certainly full of strange ones. Smith has assigned his longtime Chief of Staff to attack me for…my thank you note?

No. Really. That’s the political attack he wants to make in 2020 – that a teenager was polite to him in 1997, complimenting him in ways that may have been more courteous than accurate.

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