Sidamon-Eristoff: Let’s Turn the 2023 Election Fiasco into a Teaching Moment

OPINION

There’s no sugarcoating it: The 2023 election was an embarrassing fiasco for our New Jersey Republican Party.

After months of hyping anticipated gains, even the possibility of reclaiming a legislative majority after 20 years in the minority, we lost six seats in the General Assembly and gained zilch in the State Senate. Some of our long-serving and most prominent legislators won reelection by lower-than-comfortable margins. Local results were mixed at best.

Sure, 2023 wasn’t a great year for Republicans nationally — see Virginia and Kentucky –- but the fact remains that our candidates here in New Jersey were out-spent, out-organized, and out-hustled, and in the end New Jersey’s general election voters didn’t buy what we had to sell.

What now? To have any hope of being competitive in next year’s federal elections and the all-important gubernatorial race that follows in 2025, we must transform the 2023 fiasco into a “teaching moment” that empowers our movement for the future.

How? The first step toward recovery is acknowledging that you have a serious problem. To that end, our State Committee and 21 Republican county organizations should jointly undertake a comprehensive, brutally honest, and likely uncomfortable process of self-examination. This process should have two major components: first, polling and focus group research to find out what actually happened in 2023, and why; and, second, a formal organizational assessment of State Committee and our county organizations.

It’s axiomatic that we can’t know where we need to go without understanding where we are and where we’ve been. Through a combination of polling and focus groups, we need answers to basic questions about the 2023 election, including but not limited to:

• Who turned out to vote? Why? To what extent did the results reflect a gap in turnout?
• What motivated individual decisions to vote early or vote by mail?
• What was the impact of various issues such as abortion, parental rights, or taxes on voter turnout and choice among different voter segments? In particular, how were these issues framed in voter’s minds and how salient were they to ultimate voter choice? Was Republican messaging ineffective or just insufficient?
• What impact did national politics have on turnout and voter choice? For example, what impact did former President Trump’s ongoing role in the Republican Party have on turnout and voter choice?  Were voters aware of and motivated (positively or negatively) by the chaotic House Republican leadership fight?
• What is the perception of the New Jersey Republican Party among New Jersey voters generally and among Republican voters specifically? For example, is it perceived as the Trump/MAGA party; the party of cultural conservatism; the party of good government reform/anti-corruption; the party of the Establishment and country club business elites; the party of freedom and personal liberty; or the party of lower taxes and fiscal responsibility? Of course, these are not the only options.

Yes, opinion research can be expensive. And it’s prudent to be wary of “preparing for the last war.” Yet there is no substitute for impartial data if we are serious about understanding ourselves and becoming competitive again.

Our state and county party organizations should also undertake a formal organizational assessment. The focus should be on enhancing management and block-and-tackle operations rather than ideology or public policy. Every aspect of party operations should be on the table: leadership and committee structures, party bylaws, staffing, internal financial operations, compliance, fundraising, polling, communications, technology and data management, GOTV including early voting and voting by mail, registration, candidate recruitment and support, research, affinity groups, the use of outside consultants, relationships with the Republican National Committee, and the role of “independent” expenditures in relation to GOP organizations and candidates.

Critically, the assessment process should engage a wide range of New Jersey Republican stakeholders — state and local elected officials, county leaders, municipal chairs, county committee members, club leaders, local activists, consultants, Young Republicans, etc. — in an open-ended and candid conversation. Integrating the views of diverse stakeholders will be a time-consuming and often frustrating process, but there is no better way to build enthusiasm and a sense of common purpose.

Who should lead and do the work? One possible approach might be for State Committee to recruit several former senior Republican elected or party officials to serve on a coordinating committee, which could in turn engage volunteers, outside professionals, and/or borrow staff from county organizations.There is more than enough talent and experience within our New Jersey Republican Party to pull this off.

What’s the ultimate deliverable? By design, this process won’t magically result in a broad consensus on controversial policy issues or a sudden breakout of harmony among rival factions within the party. Instead, the New Jersey Republican Party will have a much better understanding of itself and an actionable plan for building a more efficient, effective, and competitive party organization that is ready and able to start winning elections again.

Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff is a former New Jersey State Treasurer and New York City Councilman.  In 2009, he chaired the New York Republican Strategic Planning Commission.