The problem for Bramnick is that his sentiment is far from universal among Garden State Republicans. | Mel Evans/AP Photo New Jersey Republicans debate how to handle Trump after major losses

Looking over the aftermath of Tuesday night’s bloodbath for the New Jersey GOP, Assembly Republican leader Jon Bramnick thinks he has a fix.

The party, he said, needs to clearly and forcefully repudiate the kind of rhetoric on which President Donald Trump closed the election.


“Trump’s rhetoric created an atmosphere that unified the opposition, meaning that he got people so mad that they reacted to his divisive language,“ Bramnick said. “Even a moderate like [Republican Senate nominee] Bob Hugin or a moderate like [U.S. Rep.] Leonard Lance couldn’t overcome the opposition that was reacting to this divisive environment created by the president in New Jersey.“

The problem for Bramnick is that his sentiment is far from universal among Garden State Republicans. The party’s state chairman and at least one pro-Trump state lawmaker strongly disagree with his assessment of the president.

Increasingly, GOP strength is being marginalized to rural areas in a deep blue state dominated by cities and suburbs. At the same time, Democrats have increased their party registration advantage over Republicans to more than 930,000 voters.

Come January, the state GOP, already with little power in Trenton, will have its smallest delegation in the House of Representatives in more than 100 years as it watches once solid Republican areas shift to the Democrats. At most, the 12-member delegation will have just two Republicans.

New Jersey Republicans lost at least three House seats that had been in their hands for decades. Another one of their incumbents, pro-Trump Rep. Tom MacArthur, trails Democrat Andy Kim by about 2,600 votes in the 3rd Congressional District, a race that remains too close to call, although Kim declared victory Wednesday evening.

The news wasn’t any better at the local level, where Republicans lost control of the Burlington County freeholder board and Democrats won two freeholder seats in Somerset County, breaking a 40-year losing streak.

At the state level, the party lost a significant number of seats in the Statehouse during Republican Gov. Chris Christie’s eight years in office.

There’s no question anti-Trump anger drove the Democratic wave on Tuesday, especially in suburban areas like Somerset County that were, for generations, home to moderate Republicans in the mold of Tom Kean and Christie Whitman.

“He who shall not be named was very helpful throughout the entire cycle. I have to say thanks to that guy, because we’re energized,” Somerset County Democratic Chairwoman Peg Schaffer said in a clear reference to the president.

Trump’s “summer White House” — the Trump National Golf Club — is located in Bedminster, Somerset County, and “every time he came into Somerset county, more people got engaged,” Schaffer said.

Bedminster is also part of the 7th Congressional District, where Rep. Leonard Lance, a moderate Republican who has held the seat for nearly a decade, was defeated Tuesday by Democrat Tom Malinowski.

Bramnick said the Republican Party can still offer a message with a wide appeal, as long as it isn’t being drowned out by divisive rhetoric — though Bramnick wouldn’t get into specific issues the president has brought up. He said wants the party to focus attention on the economy, and most of, all lowering the state’s notoriously high taxes

“Each election stands on its own merits. Clearly, there’s a map that’s difficult. In an environment where the number of Democrats has grown statewide, I’ve got challenges,” Bramnick said. “But one thing I will not let stand in my way is divisive rhetoric. These other issues of demographic changes or issues involving politics of that year, I can deal with that. But I don’t want my message drowned out. And I can tell you that’s not going to happen.“

But pro-Trump Republicans, while a relatively small minority in New Jersey, are still an influential force in the state GOP. In the state’s rural corners, like South Jersey’s largely rural 2nd Congressional District, Trump remains popular.

On Tuesday, the 2nd District’s Republican congressional candidate, Seth Grossman, came within just six points of Democrat Jeff Van Drew despite being massively out-funded. Grossman, who ran on a pro-Trump message, lost support from the national GOP for posting a white supremacist article on social media. But the eight county Republican committees that make up the district all stuck with him.

Even so, the Republican candidates who embraced Trump — and even those who sought distance from him — all had a bad night.

New Jersey Republican State Chairman Doug Steinhardt did not return a phone call seeking comment on Wednesday. But when Bramnick criticized Trump after Republicans lost last year’s gubernatorial election, along with some state legislative seats, Steinhardt issued a statement saying Bramnick spoke “as an individual and not on behalf of the NJGOP.”

State Sen. Michael Doherty (R-Warren), a pro-Trump Republican from a rural North Jersey district, put the blame for New Jersey’s losses on Bramnick’s strategy.

“We have had Jon Bramnick’s strategy in play in New Jersey for the last two-and-a-half years, where party chairmen and elected officials run away from Trump as quickly as possible. Never associate with Trump. Disassociate with Trump,” Doherty said Wednesday. “So for folks to say here on November 7, 2018, after we’ve had one of the worst defeats in New Jersey since the Watergate era, we have tried their strategy for the last two-and-a-half years. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I’ve gone to Republican events where there’s not one Trump sign anywhere.

“When you’re on the battlefield, you have to be unified, you have to stick together, you have to have a mission, a goal, you have to head in a certain direction,” said Doherty, a West Point graduate. “And this year in New Jersey, in the Republican army, the soldiers were scattered.”

That’s the conundrum for the New Jersey GOP.

While being pro-Trump is a key to motivating the base, there just aren’t enough rural areas of the state to make the GOP anything but a minority party.

“In a sense, they’re both right,” said Micah Rasmussen, director Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. “However, I will say that I don’t think that there’s enough votes in the rural parts of the state to justify Doherty’s position.

“If you are going to take any kind of a run at all at the majority of voters in this state, you’ve got to take the Bramnick strategy,” said Rasmussen, who spent several years as an Assembly Democratic staffer. “ It’s not going to be easy.“