With his entrance into the 2024 presidential race, former Gov. Chris Christie will try again to become the first New Jerseyan to win the presidency since 1912.
New Jersey has not been known as the Land of Presidents: Gov. Woodrow Wilson and Grover Cleveland, who was born in Caldwell and served as governor of New York, were the only Jersey guys to make it to the White House.
Christie’s last presidential bid didn’t go well: he dropped one day after finishing sixth in New Hampshire with 7.4% of the vote and no delegates.
Cory Booker sought the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination but withdrew on January 13, 2019. Former Rep. John Delaney (D-Maryland) dropped out on January 30, 2020. Delaney grew up in Wood-Ridge, attended Bergen Catholic High School, and went to college on a scholarship provided by his father’s union, IBEW Local 164 in Paramus.
New Jersey magazine publisher Steve Forbes sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1996 and 2000. In the week following his third-place finish in the 1996 New Hampshire primary, Forbes won primaries in Delaware and Arizona, but those were his only victories. His 2000 race was less successful.
Former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley sought the Democratic nomination for president in 2000 against Vice President Al Gore. Bradley won no primaries that year and his best showing was 45.6% in New Hampshire.
In 1960, New Jersey’s delegates to the Democratic National Convention were pledged to Gov. Robert Meyner, the favorite-son candidate. Meyner was interested in the presidency but never formally entered the race; he had hoped that delegates might turn to him as their candidate if the convention deadlocked between John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Wilson won in 1912, two years after he was elected governor.
Primaries in those days were uncommon, and convention rules didn’t necessarily bind delegates. Wilson won contests in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Oregon, New Jersey, and South Dakota. Speaker of the House Champ Clark won in Illinois, Nebraska, Massachusetts, Maryland, and California.
He won the Democratic nomination on the 46th ballot after a deadlocked convention in Baltimore narrowed the field to Wilson and Clark. Democrats had a two-thirds rule to nominate a presidential candidate. Clark had led Wilson through the first 29 ballots.
Wilson was also the last New Jersey presidential candidate to make it to the New Jersey primary.
William Dayton sought the Republican presidential nomination. Dayton was elected to the New Jersey Legislature as a member of the Whig Party in 1837 and then became an associate justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court in 1838. He was appointed to the U.S. Senate when the incumbent died in 1842. He was elected to a full term in 1845 but lost his bid for re-election in 1851.
At the national convention in Chicago, Dayton received 14 votes on the first ballot – all from New Jersey. He lost four New Jersey delegates to Abraham Lincoln on the second ballot. On the third ballot, New Jersey gave Lincoln eight votes, with five going to William Seward and just one holding for Dayton.
Lincoln won the nomination on the third ballot.
Dayton was one of the less-known members of Lincoln’s “Team of Rivals” – he became the U.S. Minister (that’s what ambassadors were called then) to France. He helped convince Napoleon to recognize the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Dayton nearly knocked Lincoln out of his place in history four years earlier.
He became a member of the new Republican Party and sought the vice presidential nomination at the first Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in 1856.
Dayton’s main competitor for the vice presidency was a former congressman from Illinois – Lincoln. He led Lincoln 253 to 110 on an informal first ballot, after which most delegates swung his way.
He became the running mate of John Frémont, a U.S. Senator from California. Democrats James Buchanan and John Breckinridge defeated Frémont and Dayton.
Dayton got crushed in his home state. Buchanan won New Jersey by a 47%-29% margin, with 24% going to an independent former president Millard Fillmore.
Dayton returned to New Jersey after his defeat to spend four years as the state Attorney General.