Meet Ed Durr, the candidate who might knock Steve Sweeney out of the Senate

Meet Edward Durr, giant slayer. Maybe.

Durr, a truck driver for the furniture store Raymour & Flanigan, held a roughly 2,000-vote advantage Wednesday morning over Senate President Steve Sweeney, an officer in the Ironworkers union who’s led the upper house for 12 years and is the second most powerful official in New Jersey government.

In a night filled with surprises beyond the razor-thin governor’s race that could remain unresolved for some time, the race in South Jersey’s 3rd Legislative District was the biggest shocker — and one with massive implications for the future of New Jersey politics. The district includes parts of Gloucester, Cumberland and Salem counties.

Even Durr harbored doubts about his chances, and wasn’t ready to declare victory just yet, telling POLITICO he’s “walking on eggshells” until the results are official. It’s not clear how many outstanding ballots remain in the race. But it was looking bleak for Sweeney, who was until recently talked up in Democratic circles as a likely 2025 candidate for governor.

“I kept telling myself and telling people I was going to do it, but in the back of my mind I was like, ‘You know, how am I going to beat the Senate president?” said Durr, who ran unsuccessfully for Assembly in 2019 and has never held elected office.

But Durr said that as he sat in his living room with his family Tuesday night as the results rolled in, it dawned on him that there was a decent chance he‘d soon be a member of the state Senate.

“My daughter was sitting next to me. She laughed at me and said ‘Dad, you’ve got tears running down my face,” Durr said Wednesday morning.

Durr, a 58-year-old father of three and grandfather of six who grew up in South Jersey and lives in Logan Township, estimates he spent less than $10,000 on the race. By contrast, in 2017, when the New Jersey Education Association, state’s largest teachers union, was feuding with Sweeney, it spent about $5.4 million to take him out, yet he still won by 18 points.

This was a far different electorate, with Republican districts and those with large blue collar populations turning out in droves for Republicans.

It wasn’t just Sweeney. Durr’s Assembly running mates, Bethanne McCarthy Patrick and Beth Sawyer, appeared on track to defeat incumbents John Burzichelli and Adam Taliaferro (both D-Gloucester).

Durr said Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s coronavirus executive orders, vaccine and school mask, unemployment benefits snafus and a general distrust of the South Jersey Democratic machine that has dominated the region for years all contributed to his strong performance.

Sweeney, Durr said, “never challenged” Murphy during the pandemic.

“You have the debacle of unemployment. The masking of the kids in school. You have Senator Sweeney trying to take away peoples’ medical freedom rights,” Durr said. “I think the perfect storm was that he stepped into a pile of you-know-what and couldn’t get out of it because he didn’t know which way to turn. I just tapped into…