The tweets — for which Sussex County Republican Chairman Jerry Scanlan took responsibility — went largely unnoticed outside of local GOP circles for well over a week. | Getty Anti-Islamic tweets further imperil mainstream New Jersey Republicans

TRENTON, N.J. — New Jersey Republicans find themselves emulating President Donald Trump’s inflammatory anti-Islamic tweets, but that’s posing a problem for the party’s standing in the Garden State.

One of the tweets from the official Twitter account of the Sussex County, N.J., Republican Party called the four congresswomen who Trump had said should “go back” to the “places from which they came,” the “whores of Babble-on.” Another retweeted a series of messages that also targeted the congresswomen. And a third referred to them as the “Jihad Squad.” The account also retweeted a message that called for Americans to “eradicate Islam from every town, city, county and state in our homeland!”


The tweets — for which Sussex County Republican Chairman Jerry Scanlan took responsibility — went largely unnoticed outside of local GOP circles for well over a week. That was until several activists raised the issue at a meeting of the Sussex County Community College board of trustees, on which Scanlan sits.

The controversy went national.

By all accounts, Scanlan’s position as chairman of the Republican Party in deep-red Sussex County appears to be safe; the GOP base in New Jersey is as devoted to the president as its pro-Trump brethren in the reddest of states.

Still, the Republican Party’s influence statewide, which had been steadily diminishing for decades, continues to plummet in the post-Chris Christie era as Trump’s rhetoric has alienated voters in one of the most diverse states in the nation. That’s presented a problem for GOP leaders in New Jersey, who are aware racist and socially divisive rhetoric doesn’t play well with much of the electorate, but remain wary of alienating party stalwarts and angering Trump supporters.

At least one former county GOP official wonders whether the party can ever recover from the incendiary rhetoric.

New Jersey is far from the only state where Republican officials have broadcast anti-Islamic sentiments on social media — something that has reportedly increased since Trump in 2015 launched a campaign filled with anti-Islamic rhetoric. A BuzzFeed analysis last year found state and local Republican officials in 49 states had made anti-Islamic statements.

According to the Pew Research Center, New Jersey has the highest per capita Muslim population in the country — about 3 percent of its total population.

Bob Yudin, the former Republican chairman in Bergen County — the state’s most populous — lost his chairmanship in 2016. He blames his ouster partly on his resistance to Trump’s candidacy.

“I saw the direction the Republican Party was going, and I was deeply upset by Republicans — people who are good people, by my own experience — who were refusing to say anything, who were playing along with the sharp-right turn of the Republican Party,” Yudin said. “It has resulted in a state like New Jersey that Republicans are not competitive anymore.”

It wasn‘t long ago that Islamophobia was condemned by the top Republican leader in New Jersey. In 2011, after some right-wing blogs raised concerns that a Muslim judge Christie nominated would enforce Sharia law, Christie, never known to mince words, defended him, declaring, “I’m tired of dealing with the crazies.”

Sussex County, in the northwestern corner of the state, remains one of the few Republican pockets in deep-blue New Jersey. While Democrat Hillary Clinton won the state by 14 points in the 2016 election, Trump carried Sussex County by a 30-point margin. And while registered Democrats outnumber Republicans statewide by about 1 million, Republicans hold a 2-to-1 majority in Sussex.

When the controversy over Scanlan’s tweets — which have been deleted — first surfaced, he responded with a defiant statement blaming Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy for using them to distract from his own policies.

But late last month, after removing himself from control over the party’s social media accounts, Scanlan apologized, saying he didn’t carefully review a number of posts he retweeted.

“I re-tweeted what are known as ‘Trains,“ which include other accounts looking to achieve the same objective, often including a meme/picture/video,” Scanlan said in a statement “It appears that on a few occasions, I was not thorough enough in reading/viewing what I re-tweeted.”

A pastor Sussex County party officials tapped to review their social media accounts has his own history of anti-Islamic tweets.

No Republican elected or party officials have called for Scanlan to resign as chairman.

Republican State Chairman Doug Steinhardt declined to comment.

Party spokesperson Harrison Neely said Democrats aren’t being held to the same standards by the press because the Sussex County Democratic chairwoman, Katie Rotondi, once joked on Twitter about the eye patch worn by Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), a veteran who lost an eye in combat.

“The Chairman took accountability for his actions and apologized. Both parties need to be held to the same standard,” Neely said. “The Sussex County Democrat chair just deactivated her social media after a spotlight was shown on her mocking disabled American Veteran Congressman Dan Crenshaw.”

Rotondi in a statement said “the focus on an insensitive tweet I apologized for is in stark contrast to an onslaught of hate” from Scanlan.

Jack Ciattarelli, a former state assemblyman and moderate Republican who plans to run for governor in 2021, also said he supports Scanlan staying on as GOP chairman.

“I know Jerry personally. I don’t believe he’s got a racist or xenophobic bone in his body,” Ciattarelli said. “I think when people do use social media in an inappropriate way, it’s got to be handled on a case-by-case basis, and in this particular case, I would think that Jerry deserves a second chance.”

Chatham Township Republican Mayor Tayfun Selen, a Turkish immigrant who said he’s not religious but is from a Muslim background, declined to directly address Scanlan‘s tweets, but said he hopes New Jersey Republicans focus their rhetoric on fiscal issues.

“Voters of New Jersey are looking for us to provide solutions for their problems,” he said. “And these other types of problems, they’re just distractions."

The Sussex County scandal occurred almost simultaneously with another in southern New Jersey, where Daniel Leonard, a member of the Toms River school board, came under fire for a number of anti-Islamic posts, including one about Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) that said "my life would be complete if she/they die.”

The Toms River school board president, a fellow Republican, called on Leonard to resign. (Leonard, according to the Asbury Park Press, was elected as a Republican but has sided with Democrats on at least one key vote.) Leonard, who also recently was involved in road rage incident, has opted not to seek reelection, but is refusing to resign from the school board.

Last year, Seth Grossman, the Republican nominee for Congress in South Jersey’s 2nd District, maintained local party support despite a long history of bigoted posts on social media, including one that called Islam a “cancer.”

While the National Republican Congressional Committee dropped support for Grossman after he shared an article from a white supremacist website, the local Republican Party stood by him. Grossman wound up losing the election to a Democrat for the seat that had been held by a Republican for the previous 28 years.

“It’s very clear that Trump’s supporters have basically taken over the party’s heart and soul right now, and to go after these people for what they are saying about Islam is in many ways going after Donald Trump himself,” said Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murray. “And they’re very worried about that. So the lack of courage in this situation is astounding.”

The New Jersey Republican Party has long depended on wealthy, well-educated suburbanites to make it competitive with Democrats. But in last year’s congressional elections, voters in the state’s wealthier, GOP-leaning congressional districts went Democratic. Mikie Sherrill, a freshman Democrat, won her district by double digits over a Republican opponent who based his campaign mainly on the immigration themes espoused by Trump. The district had been controlled by Republicans for more than 30 years.

New Jersey’s congressional delegation was evenly split between Democrats and Republicans in 2016. This year, it’s represented by 11 Democrats and just one Republican.

Murray said New Jersey’s moderate, mainstream Republicans are “not happy with what’s going on and they’re not speaking up.”

“They’re sticking their heads in the sand and hoping it will all go away if Donald Trump is defeated in 2020,” he said. “Either way, you’ve got an incredible lack of courage going on in the Republican Party here in New Jersey and across the country.”

Yudin, the former Bergen County Republican chairman, said he’s “not sure” if his party will ever recover from the rhetoric of the Trump era.

“The Republican Party has crossed the rubicon now. Can’t go back,” he said. “I would like to see people stand up and speak out against what Trump has done to its party and what our party has done to itself.”