Spadea: Time for GOP to toughen up and fight for New Jersey

Over the busy weekend, I took some time to join my friends at Garden State Families for an event at the Forsgate Country Club.

The event was organized as a post-mortem for the disastrous 2025 election and a preview of the action needed to start winning again.

AP Photo/Olga Fedorova

NJ GOP’s 2025 election collapse and why it happened

We all know that after many attempts to give the Republican nominee solid advice on how to close the gap and energize voters, he failed.

Refusing to take good advice on how to cool down the battle with Brian Stack, how to effectively use his stellar running mate, Jim Gannon, and how to appeal to moderate Democrats sick and tired of the radicals who run the New Jersey Democratic Party proved politically fatal.

He actually did not heed any of the many points of advice, exposing an arrogance and lack of principles, moving many voters to hold their nose and vote for the "lesser of two evils," now Governor-Elect Mikie Sherrill.

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Looking back to 1993: The Democrats’ long game in New Jersey

In order to win, the Republican Party in New Jersey has to take a page out of the Democrats' historical strategy book. Back in 1993, Christine Todd Whitman defeated Gov. Jim Florio in his bid for a second term.

Forgetting that Whitman was among the worst governors in our state's history, it was the Democrats' reaction that deserves attention. Realizing that the optics for the Florio tax hike were what motivated voters to toss out the Democratic power brokers, they reset and started building from the ground up.

The Democrats, instead of crying over losing the Governor's Office, focused locally. That means boards of education, city councils, county commissioners (at the time freeholders) and mayors. Once they started turning red counties blue town by town, they were in a position to take back the Legislature from what was a veto-proof majority for Republicans.

It took them eight years, but in 2001, they swept into power and have been in solid control ever since.

Photo via Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Warning signs from Massachusetts and Vermont

If Republicans are serious about regaining relevance and preventing New Jersey from being the next Massachusetts, where Democrats control 90% of the State Senate seats and 86% of the House of Representatives, they need to act immediately.

There are no GOP members of the U.S. Congress from Massachusetts.

It's true that the commonwealth still elects Republicans to the Governor's Office, but ask any Republican outside of the Northeast and they'll tell you that the Mass GOP governors are more liberal than Democrats in most states.

In 1996, while President Clinton elected to serve another term, two Massachusetts congressmen lost their seats and the GOP hasn't sent a GOP the House since. Being on the ground in Massachusetts for many years while a student at Boston University, I worked on the governor's race in 1990 and the race for the U.S. Senate against Ted Kennedy.

It was clear that as Republicans started losing, they started panicking, and in a desperate attempt to try to be more Democrat-lite than Republican, they worked themselves into the corner of irrelevancy as a near-permanent minority party.

We see the same thing happening in Vermont; once in a while, you get a GOP governor, but they don't reflect the conservative values of the actual Republican Party.

Photo via Canva

The path forward for the NJ GOP: Rebuild locally, stay principled

The NJ GOP is well on the way to the permanent minority. The problem is more than nominating a guy who had no message or core principles.

After the stunning 14-point defeat and losing another five seats in the Assembly, totaling 11 lost seats in the past two elections, the GOP caucuses in the Senate and the Assembly actually re-elected the current leaders without any debate or alternative candidates.

It's not only embarrassing, but it's a sure-fire way to keep losing.

The path to victory is simple: Reset back to talking about relevant issues for New Jerseyans and offer principled and practical solutions to address education, housing, energy costs, insurance costs, transportation, over-regulations, general affordability and public safety.

Start with bold initiatives and stay on message. Get involved heavily in local non-partisan races to flip seats to leaders with common sense and relatability.

I addressed the issue in my remarks this weekend.

Stay tuned as I spend the next few months outlining those bold and practical policy initiatives.