7 Aides Resign Over Van Drew's Plan to Switch to Republican Party

Van Drew, who hails from a conservative district that for 24 years before his election was represented by a Republican, is one of only two Democrats who voted against rules laying out the impeachment process.

“Sadly, Congressman Van Drew’s decision to join the ranks of Republican Party led by Donald Trump does not align with the values we brought to this job when we joined his office,” according to a letter from five staff members, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times.

NBC News reported that a sixth staffer had also resigned. A seventh person also resigned, according to a person familiar with the situation in Van Drew’s office, leaving his chief of staff as the sole remaining staff member in his Washington office.

Van Drew’s decision drew bipartisan condemnations and is certain to become a dominant issue when he runs for reelection next year.

A Republican running for his seat called him a weasel who was not to be trusted. A Democratic foe labeled him a traitor. The governor of New Jersey said he lacked the courage to protect the Constitution.

“This is the end of his career,” said David Richter, a Republican businessman who has been campaigning for Van Drew’s seat in Congress since August and referred to him Sunday as a “weasel.”

On Monday, Brigid Harrison, a professor of political science at Montclair State University who had been taking steps toward challenging Van Drew as a Democrat in a primary, said that she, too, would run to replace him.

“I think he’s a traitor,” Harrison said. “I think it is something that is emblematic of the cynicism of our country.”

In a separate statement announcing her campaign, she said that Van Drew had “ignored the voices of our community and has instead sold his soul, cutting backroom deals with the White House.”

Even before word of Van Drew’s apparent plans became public, Harrison said, she had met with Democratic county leaders in the district, who had declined to sign a letter backing Van Drew for reelection and had criticized his anti-impeachment stance.

Harrison also said she was speaking with some of the people who resigned from Van Drew’s office about possibly joining her campaign staff.

“These people, who stood up on principle, they’re on the front line of the people he betrayed,” she said in a telephone interview after she announced her campaign.

Van Drew did not return calls. But the freshman congressman, who is up for reelection next year, has told aides he is preparing to switch parties as soon as this week.

In an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News several weeks ago, Van Drew said Trump would likely survive an impeachment process given Republican control of the Senate and that voters, not Congress, should decide Trump’s fate.

“At the end of the day, I’m afraid all we’re going to have is a failed impeachment,” he said, adding: “The bottom line is he’s still going to be the president of the United States, and the bottom line is he is still going to be the candidate of the Republican Party. So why don’t we let the people do the impeachment by voting in the electoral process the way that we usually do?”

Richter, 53, said he had been told by Republican leaders in the district that crosses Cape May, Cumberland and Atlantic counties that Trump was expected to endorse Van Drew. Still, he said he had no plans to step aside to clear an easy path to the Republican nomination for Van Drew.

“I’m in this thing all the way through,” said Richter, a former chief executive of a publicly traded construction management firm, Hill International, who personally contributed $300,000 of the $413,000 his campaign raised during the first quarter.

“If I have to put $1 million of my own money into this race, to win, I’m prepared to do it,” he said.

Richter added that any support Trump offered Van Drew, in exchange for the distraction a high-profile Democratic defection could offer in a week when the president faces impeachment, would quickly fade once Trump had “gotten what he wanted.”

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The state Republican chairman, Doug Steinhardt, could not be reached for comment. Mike Testa Jr., a Republican who was elected in November to Van Drew’s former state Senate seat and who is a chairman of Trump’s reelection effort in New Jersey, did not return calls.

The staff members who resigned include Van Drew’s communications director, director of constituency relations and legislative director.

The resignation of the five staff members was reported by Politico.

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In addition to Richter, Van Drew could face two other already-announced opponents, Brian Fitzherbert and Bob Patterson, if he pursues the Republican nomination.

“He’s doing what he’s done for nearly 30 years,” Fitzherbert said of Van Drew. “Political survivorship. It’s desperation.”

Democrats were equally unsparing in their criticism.

The state’s powerful Senate president, Stephen M. Sweeney, vowed retribution as the national Democratic Party offered jobs to the members of Van Drew’s congressional staff who had quit “to stand up for their Democratic values.”

“Jeff Van Drew’s decision to switch parties is a betrayal to every voter who supported him in 2018,” Sweeney said in a statement. “But now he is out of the Democratic Party, and in November, we are going to take him out of Congress.”

Gov. Philip D. Murphy, speaking on CNN, predicted that Van Drew would be defeated.

“He’s putting politics over the Constitution,” Murphy said. “I think it’s ridiculous.”

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Van Drew’s district sprawls across the southern part of New Jersey, from Atlantic City west toward the Pennsylvania border.

On Monday, constituents at a Wawa convenience store in Vineland, New Jersey, had mixed reactions to their congressman’s apparent defection.

“As long as he does what he thinks is the right thing, it doesn’t matter what party he is aligned with,” said Bill Crane, 65, who is not registered to vote with any political party and who did not vote for Van Drew in the last election.

“I don’t like the idea when they just blindly follow the party line,” Crane, a roofing contractor who lives in Vineland, explained. He added that if Van Drew did run as a Republican, he would “look into it a little more.”

But David Dunham, 65, a registered independent who did vote for Van Drew, said he felt “betrayed” and “misled” by his representative’s decision.

“He was elected as a Democrat, and for some reason he seems to have aligned himself with Trump, and he should have advertised that when he was elected,” Dunham, of Millville, New Jersey, said.

If Harrison, who lives in Longport in Van Drew’s district, wins the support of established Democratic Party leaders in the district, she may face a primary challenge of her own.

The left-leaning Working Families Alliance issued a statement late Saturday laying blame for the debacle on George Norcross III, a Democratic power broker who is a member of the Democratic National Committee and who had supported Van Drew’s political climb from mayor to state senator to congressman.

“This is a direct result of the South Jersey Democratic machine’s power — a machine that engineered Van Drew’s rise knowing his values were out of step with the party,” said Sue Altman, director of the alliance, an affiliate of the national Working Families Party.

On Sunday, she said she anticipated insurgent Democratic challengers.

“I think there’s still some very qualified candidates who are going to emerge,” Altman said. “I would imagine there’s a real thirst for an anti-machine candidate.”

Harrison, a 54-year-old mother of three who has taught at Montclair for more than two decades, said she did not consider herself a political insider.

“I don’t think of myself as being establishment,” she said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .