Rebecca Bennett is not like you, but she wants to be your representative in Congress

The numbers tell a story Rebecca Bennett would rather you not examine too closely.

While New Jersey families ration groceries under the weight of $3.50 per gallon gas and $3,000 rent payments, this Texas transplant and aspiring congresswoman reported struggling through last year on a paltry $400,000 in household income – her $264,208 salary supplemented by her Defense Department-employed spouse’s estimated $145,000 government paycheck.

Her liquid assets? A cozy $150,000 is parked in bank accounts and tax shelters.

Her investment portfolio? A robust $1.8 million spread across 76 corporations and 22 ETFs – including climate arsonists like Exxon and war profiteers like Raytheon.

This is the profile of a woman who wants working-class New Jerseyans to believe she understands their struggles, at a time when economic disparities represent a 50-year-long class war waged against working families.

“When I’m talking to people across our district, the number one issue I hear about is how expensive it is to raise a family. I’m a mom of two, so I feel this every day,” said Bennett in a social media post, but while I suspect she has the two children she claims, the suggestion that she feels ” how expensive it is to raise a family” is a flat-out lie.

People making over $400,000 live in a different world than those living on $40,000.

At a recent campaign stop between her hedge fund meetings, Bennett, whose military service does not erase her Wall Street portfolio, told thirty voters that congressional service requires the same precision as landing a helicopter.

What she failed to mention is that when her corporate investments crash, it’s not her family that burns – just the planet and its poorest inhabitants.

Her financial disclosures read like a rap sheet against progressive values:

• $105,000 in fossil fuel giants accelerating climate collapse
• $60,000 in defense contractors feeding the military-industrial complex
• $145,000 in Wall Street vampires like BlackRock and JP Morgan

Yet Bennett insists she’s the Democrat who can connect with rural conservatives – presumably by showing them how to open a Merrill Lynch account while collecting two government salaries.

The cognitive dissonance would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous. This is a candidate who identified John McCain as her role model – the same McCain who voted against veterans’ healthcare 15 times and scored an 81% lifetime rating from the arch-conservative Club for Growth.

She’s running in a district that flipped from Trump to Biden and back again, promising to be a “different kind of Democrat” while her money works overtime for the status quo.

Neoliberal Democratic strategists in Washington, DC, may see Bennett’s veteran status as their golden ticket to reclaiming disaffected voters, but anyone in New Jersey can see she is the epitome of ‘more of the same.’

But no amount of military service washes away the stench of a portfolio that includes private prison financiers (PNC Bank), union-busters (Home Depot), and Big Pharma price-gougers (Eli Lilly).

As Bennett’s campaign video no doubt shows her doing things that appear normal for most New Jersey voters, like walking down the street on a sunny day or talking to shopkeepers and senior citizens, here’s what it won’t show:

• The Texas flood victims displaced by her Exxon investments
• The Palestinian families bombed by her Raytheon holdings
• The New Jersey single mothers priced out of insulin by her Big Pharma stocks

The truth is simple: Rebecca Bennett isn’t running for Congress to serve you. She’s running because, for America’s investor class, public office is just another asset that conveniently comes with insider trading privileges and a lifetime lobbying parachute.

New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District, currently held by Republican Tom Kean Jr., is one of the most competitive in the nation, and the trust fund baby is richer than the military veteran from Texas who is trying to buy the Democratic nod to take him out.

However, New Jersey deserves a representative who knows what it’s like to choose between groceries and gas – not one who thinks “middle class” means struggling by on half a million while your stocks appreciate. There are plenty of choices in the fight for the nomination but probably none as bad as Bennett.

One Navy helicopter pilot from Virginia is about to land in the governor’s office. We do not need another one from Texas whose role model claimed, “Every time we cut capital gains taxes, there has been an increase in revenues.” That is simply not true.

The kind of people who are getting crushed in a broken economy are the ones who need to be represented in Congress, even if the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and other establishment institutions are hoping to nominate a wealthy out-of-touch contender by putting a thumb on the scale.

Justice Louis Brandeis famously stated: “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”

Democracy is already hanging by a thread. Guess what will happen if New Jersey sends another neoliberal millionaire to Washington, instead of a genuine progressive who has roots in the Garden State?