Think you'd like to be one of New Jersey's 13 members of the House of Representatives?

Better wait for one of them to retire or die.

No matter how good your political credentials might be, your chances of beating an incumbent for a seat in the House are pretty slim.

An analysis of the latest campaign finance reports from this year's New Jersey congressional campaigns and data from past races show challengers have been woefully funded and rarely successful.

Some of the facts:

The 13 incumbents in next week's races have spent nearly 10 times as much on their campaigns as their major-party challengers.

The most any single challenger has spent is less than $500,000, and that candidate has been out-spent by more than 4-to-1.
Sitting congressmen had raised a total of $16.7 million for their races as of Sept. 30, compared with $1.5 million by their opponents. In two races, challengers reported no money raised or spent.
Incumbents have received nearly 97 percent of the $5.2 million doled out in the state by political action committees, run by special interests that benefit from action in the nation's capital.
The disparity this year continues a trend.

Adding data from the past two congressional elections to the current one, incumbents overall raised almost seven times as much as their opponents. In that time, 85 percent of the PAC money went to incumbents.

During the past 20 years in New Jersey, House members who ran for re-election won 116 of 120 races -- and 100 of those wins were landslides -- according to the Center for Voting and Democracy, a nonprofit group in Takoma Park, Md. Almost as many incumbents died in office (three) as were voted out (four).

The last time a challenger knocked out a New Jersey member of Congress was 1998, when Democrat Rush Holt unseated Republican Michael Pappas. Two years later, former Rep. Dick Zimmer came within a few hundred votes of ousting Holt.

Since then, the incumbent edge has become stronger than ever, thanks to a redrawing of congressional district boundaries in 2002 that put more Democratic voters in Democratic members' districts and filled GOP districts with more Republicans.

"It really seems as if the congressional district lines have been drawn so no incumbent is vulnerable any more, and the only action we're going to see is an open seat," said Ross Baker, a Rutgers University political science professor. "What you have in these 13 seats is the political equivalent of academic tenure."

Parties sometimes can't find anyone to run against entrenched House members. This year, Rep. Donald Payne (D-10th Dist.) has no Republican opponent. Two years ago, Reps. Robert Andrews (D-1st Dist.) and Robert Menendez (D-13th Dist.) went unopposed.

Political scientists expect all 13 New Jersey incumbents to win handily this year.

The race that has sparked the most interest is Democrat Steve Brozak's attempt to unseat Republican Rep. Michael Ferguson in the 7th District. That district, which includes parts of Essex, Middlesex, Somerset and Union counties, also produced lively contests the past two elections.

Brozak, an investment banker and an ex-Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who served in Iraq, has run a feisty campaign and gained media attention when he addressed the Democratic National Convention in Boston. He has raised far more than any other nonincumbent candidate in the state this year: $671,217 as of Sept. 30.

But Ferguson raised four times as much ($2,679,551) and is out-spending Brozak by the same ratio.

"For a while, it looked like he (Brozak) got all the play. Democrats were making noise on his behalf," said David Rebovich, a political science professor at Rider University.

But when House Democratic Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) recently unveiled a list of 15 targeted Republican incumbents, Ferguson's name was absent. That means Brozak will receive little, if any, support from national Democrats. "At this late date, it really is a kiss of death," Rebovich said.

No other New Jersey race was earmarked for national funding, either.

Ironically, the best-funded incumbent is one of the least prone to defeat: Menendez has raised $3.5 million and spent nearly all of it. His Republican opponent, Richard Piatkowski, has not reported raising or spending anything.

Menendez, currently Democratic caucus chairman, has informed party members he hopes to become majority whip if Democrats win House control, and spread some of his cash around to candidates in other states. According to a recent article in Roll Call, Menendez said he has raised $800,000 for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and he donated more than $300,000 to Democratic candidates.

But with so few competitive races around the country, the chances of a Democratic takeover in the House are slim. Republicans hold 227 seats to 205 Democrats, one independent and two vacancies.

Rob Richie, executive director of the Center for Voting and Democracy, said the incumbent stranglehold on congressional seats should worry anyone concerned about a vibrant democracy. His group was formed in 1992 to push for more competitive elections.

Less turnover stifles dissent within the majority and relegates the minority to extreme irrelevance, Richie said. Republicans now vote along party lines at a historically high rate, he said. The incumbencies also tend to mean fewer opportunities for women and minorities, he said.

"It's very bad for democracy to have these tremendous rates of incumbent dominance," Richie said.