Three weeks after Joe Biden was projected to win the presidency, many prominent New Jersey Republicans remain silent as President Donald Trump seeks to overturn the election and makes unproven claims of voter fraud.
While some three dozen lawsuits rejected by state and federal courts and states certifying Biden as the winner of their electoral votes, state GOP leaders and some of the candidates looking at taking on Gov. Phil Murphy in next year’s gubernatorial election aren’t saying much.
Former state Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, R-Somerset, one of those seeking the 2021 Republican gubernatorial nomination, declined to comment late Monday.
Another potential candidate for governor, state Republican Chairman Doug Steinhardt, did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did state Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr., R-Union.
Rep. Chris Smith, R-4th Dist., said last week that Trump had every right “to exhaust all legal avenues to ensure that all legal ballots are properly counted and any fraud in the election process is exposed.”
Smith did not respond to more recent queries following the certification of the vote in Georgia and Michigan and the dismissal of a lawsuit in Pennsylvania.
And Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-2nd Dist., who switched parties and embraced Trump last year, has not responded to several inquiries as to whether he agreed with the president that the election was stolen.
Ironically, the president’s most prominent New Jersey supporter, former Gov. Chris Christie, has become an outlier. Over the weekend, he called Trump’s legal team “a national embarrassment” on ABC’s “This Week” and said they had yet to provide any evidence of voter fraud.
And former Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno said Trump’s refusal to concede was “cowardly and shameless.”
Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick, R-Union, joined them, saying Trump has failed to support his claims of a stolen election.
“He should have never gone out and said he had won without producing evidence of fraud and illegality,” said Bramnick, who also is pondering a run for governor in 2021.
“At this point, it appears every court has dismissed the lawsuits,” he said. “Unless there’s something out there that I’m not aware of, there appears to be no evidence to overturn the election. I have an open mind of maybe there’s something I’m not aware of. But based on what I am aware of, it’s over.”
Even as Trump authorized the General Services Administration to go ahead with the presidential transition, he tweeted: “Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good fight, and I believe we will prevail!”
And in a fundraising email Tuesday, Trump said, “We cannot let the Democrats STEAL this Election from your all-time favorite President. They’ll DESTROY everything we’ve worked so hard for.”
The Trump campaign’s legal adviser, Jenna Ellis, on Monday dismissed the states’ actions to certify the elections.
“Certification by state officials is simply a procedural step,” she said in a statement. “We are going to continue combatting election fraud around the country as we fight to count all the legal votes. Americans must be assured that the final results are fair and legitimate.”
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Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com.
Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com.