New Jersey cast twelve votes for Donald J. Trump today after the Republican National Committee ultimately declined to grant a waiver to seat the state’s delegation because it missed a critical deadline earlier this year.
New Jersey lost 40 delegate seats as a penalty for not meeting an RNC requirement that all delegates be selected by May 31, five days before the New Jersey presidential primary on June 4.
Republican National Committeeman Bill Palatucci did not vote for Trump. He is not scheduled to arrive in Milwaukee until tomorrow.
Palatucci won re-election last month by just two votes after Trump endorsed another candidate, Atlantic County GOP Chairman Donald Purdy. Palatucci had been a staunch anti-Trump member of the RNC, backing his protégé, former Gov. Chris Christie, for the 2024 presidential nomination and then helping the former New Jersey governor mull an independent bid on the No Labels ticket. Conservatives criticized Palatucci in 2022 for voting against an RNC resolution censuring Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kitzinger.
New Jersey elected ten at-large delegates and 36 district delegates, and while the Republican National Committee provided enough physical seats on the convention floor to accommodate the state’s entire delegation, they declined to formally seat them.
While New Jersey had one too many at-large delegates, the issue became moot after one of the primary winners, Darlene Shotmeyer of Bergen County, was unable to make it to Milwaukee. The nine delegates voting were: Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis); Purdy; State Sens. Michael Testa, Jr. (R-Vineland), the Cumberland GOP chairman, and Douglas Steinhardt (R-Lopatcong), the Warren GOP chairman and a former state Republican chairman; Cape May GOP Chairman Michael Donohue; Ocean GOP Chairman George Gilmore; Van Drew staffers Allison Murphy and Ron Filan; and conservative podcaster Mike Crispi.
Republican State Chairman Bob Hugin voted for Trump. Alternates cast ballots for Republican National Committeewoman Virginia Haines and Palatucci. (Haines did not seek re-election — she was replaced by Janice Fields — and her term expires later this year.)
Testa announced New Jersey’s votes.
The New Jersey delegation was assigned hotel rooms in Madison, 80 miles from Milwaukee – the equivalent of Toms River to Paramus.
Last fall, Hugin proposed canceling the GOP primary and selecting delegates at a Republican state convention instead. But state committee members voted it down, 34-0.
At the time, the plan was viewed as potentially helpful to former Gov. Chris Christie, who was then a presidential candidate.
Hugin contributed $100,000 to Christie’s Tell It Like It Is super PAC and donated to Nikki Haley and Christie.
Still, scheduling the primary date was out of Hugin’s reach; in New Jersey, the legislature sets primary election dates.
Twelve votes put New Jersey’s census at nine votes behind Puerto Rico and three in front of American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands.
This is the lowest delegate count for New Jersey at a Republican National Convention ever.
The state sent 21 delegates to the first Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in 1856; New Jersey cast fourteen votes for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John McLean, a former Ohio congressman who was born in Morris County, New Jersey, and seven votes for former California U.S. Senator John Frémont. Frémont won the nomination and picked a former U.S. Senator from New Jersey, Jonathan Dayton, as his running mate.