There was a moment in time when Democrats talked about going high when the other party went low. In CD-7, Tina Shah has made a different choice.

Attack ads often reveal two things. One is that the candidate behind it knows they are losing. The other is that they deserve to lose.

Why? Because attack ads are, by design, empty and deceptive. It is one thing to question an opponent’s positions. That is called a campaign. It is quite another to use distorted lighting, ominous sound effects, and distorted photographic images to create the illusion of a threat. Which is only an illusion. That , incidentally, was the very tactic Kean, Jr., used against his Democratic opponents in 2022 and 2024.

Tina Shah has unleashed a series of ads on YouTube (and possibly other media) against Rebecca Bennett. You can decide for yourselves what category they fall into.

Putting the distorted lighting, ominous sound effects, and distorted photographic images in Shah’s latest ads to the side, let’s focus on content.

Shah has settled on one message. She is good, and Bennett is bad. Based on what?

Well, we know from several other Shah ads that she claims to have worked for better patient healthcare. And in those ads she offers one photo as evidence of that claim. Of herself and other physicians with then President Obama at the White House. From it, we are, I suppose, to discern that Obama knows/supports Shah. Except that, according to the chief photographer during Obama’s presidency, some two million photos were taken of President Obama. https://www.npr.org/2017/11/07/562341917/photographer-pete-souza-reflects-on-8-years-and-1-9-million-photos-of-obama. Any number of which, we can assume, were virtually the same as the one Shah has shared with us, but with different people in it. Making Shah’s photo the functional equivalent of fan mail.

I am not saying that Shah did no work for the Obama administration. For example, she seems to have played some vaguely described role in trying to advise the Surgeon General about physician burn-out. But if Obama is really endorsing Tina Shah, wouldn’t she tell us that? Shah doesn’t for the simple reason that he isn’t.  Instead, we get a photograph. And a strategy – go low – that is (ironically) directly at odds with Michelle Obama’s admonition to go high.

What else do we know? Shah, as a physician, is herself part of a healthcare system that I can attest - as a former Healthcare Compliance Officer at J&J, federal healthcare fraud prosecutor, and acting General Counsel to a NJ Hospital System - is broken. Broken from the outside because of deep program flaws. As well as from the inside because it encourages doctors to treat over advising, preventing, and diagnosing. Currently, the more doctors actually treat, the more they make.

Dr, Shah says she has fought for her patients. Well, of course she has. For some very good reasons, I am sure. But also, because if an insurer does not pay for a patient’s care, there is another person who likely does not get paid. Their treating physician. Which, for Shah’s patients, is Shah.

And Shah seems to be very good at getting paid.  Good enough to loan herself $650,000, which is one dollar out of every three that has been raised by her campaign. https://www.fec.gov/data/candidate/H6NJ07250/.

Shah also tells us that she is for “abolishing” ICE. Many of us (including Rebecca Bennett) are committed to ending the Trump Administration’s lawlessness across the board. Many of us (including Rebecca Bennett) are committed to fundamentally changing how ICE is now being run. But make no mistake. “Abolish ICE” is a synonym for open borders. Which was a key reason why Trump won in 2024 and, therefore a key reason why we are where we are now. The notion that Shah, by now going back to that dry well, is trying to serve us does not seem plausible. Leaving, unfortunately, an alternative explanation. To win the primary, Shah will do whatever she can think of to defeat Bennett, even if the positions she takes to try to do so materially decrease Shah’s ability to beat Kean. Jr. in November.

So –Shah is good because she wants to “abolish ICE.”  Bennett is bad because she wants to fundamentally reform it. Got it?

We are also told by Shah that Bennett is bad because Bennett may have voted Republican years ago. On the merits of that claim, Bennett explains: “she grew up in Texas in a Republican leaning family and that's how she registered when she turned 18. She then entered the military - serving as a Navy helicopter pilot. Bennett said the military is "apolitical," but when 2016 rolled around she was out of the service. At that time, she said she realized her values aligned with the Democratic Party and that's how she registered. And . . . she made a contribution to Hillary Clinton's campaign.” https://www.insidernj.com/bennett-d-c-republicans-are-lying-about-me-out-of-fear/

But that’s only half the equation. The other is that CD 7 is majority Republican district that has elected Kean, Jr. twice. Who, then, is more likely to win there - a naked tribalist (Shah), who seems to argue that if you ever voted for a Republican you are bad, or a moderate centrist Democrat (Bennett) who, after serving this country in the military for 15 years, decided to undergo what she is now being subjected to for the good of her family and her nation?

You know the answer. So does Shah. And we all know something else.

American democracy is literally on life support. Our only chance of resuscitating it is by electing those who will lead us out of this morass. Bennett led men and women in harm’s way. Bennett, rejecting all corporate PAC money, has  - with over 13,000 contributors - not had to loan money to her campaign. Bennett is staying true to her values and life experience. Bennett knows that we are better than our political parties, that good ideas can come from anywhere, and that an elected official is there to represent her constituents’ priorities. Bennett is an authentic leader who, through actions she has taken in her life, has demonstrated real leadership.

Shah is a doctor. No shame in that.  But she has apparently led no one. One out of three of Shah’s campaign dollars are her own. She is all in on tribalism to try to win the primary, even though that will box her in – perhaps fatally – in the general. While misusing distorted lighting, ominous sound effects, and distorted photographic images to create the illusion that Bennett somehow represents a threat to something other than Shah’s own candidacy (and ego).

Is Shah a leader, or something else? You decide.

As for me - I support Rebecca Bennett because in my view she is the best person for the job. But I do not work for her, I do not coordinate with her, I did not vette this article with her or her campaign, and its contents are mine alone.

Bennett certainly doesn’t need my two cents to win. I offer them up here for a more pedestrian reason. I am sick to death of being subjected to garbage politics. If you are, too, you don’t need to write an article about it.  Just hold the purveyors of that brand of politics accountable at the ballot box.