Chris Smith, NJ's sole surviving Republican in DC, expects GOP comeback in 2020

After his party's worst congressional defeat in state history, Rep. Chris Smith will be the only Republican representing New Jersey in Washington next year.

The 65-year-old Hamilton resident does not expect to be flying solo for long, however.

"I think it's going to be just for two years, and then some of those races will have different outcomes," Smith said.

Smith attributes the thrashing the GOP took in losing four House seats to anger over President Donald Trump. And while Trump will be on the ballot in 2020, voters who want to can lash out at him directly, and then revert to their normal habit of picking Republicans for Congress, Smith said.

"I think it's almost inevitable," he said, arguing New Jersey voters have a history of splitting their tickets between voting for popular Democrats for president or senator and then picking Republican candidates for House.

But Smith's 38-year longevity in Congress demonstrates the folly of making predictions about congressional upsets being overturned in the following election.

As a 27-year-old leader of the anti-abortion group New Jersey Right to Life, Smith was given little chance of unseating a powerful Democratic congressman, Frank Thompson, in 1980. He had run against Thompson two years earlier and lost by 24 percentage points.

But in February 1980, Thompson was indicted in the Abscam bribery investigation, and Smith won that November by 16 percentage points. Democrats expected him to be a one-termer and ran a top leader of the state Legislature against him in 1982. Smith got 53 percent, and never looked back. Now he is the dean of the New Jersey delegation, and tied for the third longest-serving member of the entire House. 

"Congressman Thompson had serious problems, so it was not a surprise there would be a change then," said former Gov. Jim Florio, a Democrat who was serving in the House when Smith arrived. "Nobody expected it would stay that way as long as it has."

Florio said Smith survived because he was “constituent oriented,” built a strong relationship with labor unions, and had “low visibility,” meaning “he didn’t get blamed for Republican positions that were unpopular.”

Former Gov. Christie Whitman, a Republican who supports abortion rights, said she remembers an aide in Smith's office lecturing her on the subject when she first ran. But while she and Smith never agreed on abortion, he still spent a day campaigning with her in the district.

"Chris isn’t a grandstander," Whitman said. "He knows all politics is local, and he isn’t looking for headlines or another job."

Smith is renowned for focusing on local constituents' problems, and that work has led him to become an advocate on such issues as autism and Alzheimer's disease. He also opposed cuts to poverty programs and supported laws designed to improve working people's wages. 

Smith said the time he has spent in the minority is almost equal to the time he has spent in the majority in the House.

"Frankly, both have advantages," he said. He recalled being in the majority and GOP leaders taking away his chairmanship of the House Veterans Affairs Committee in 2005 because he would not go along with cuts to veteran health programs.

"I said not on my watch, not ever," Smith said. "I got six chairman to vote against the budget. I talked to them, I rallied a group of insurgents – probably too strong a word –and I lost the chairmanship," he said.

Smith said he feels he has the freedom to buck leadership regardless of whether the GOP is in the majority or the minority.

"But I do pay a price more when we're in the majority," he said.

As a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Smith has also become a global advocate for human rights, fighting against modern slavery and criticizing presidents of both parties when they are not hard enough on countries that tolerate or even encourage human trafficking.

On Tuesday, he won passage of his bill to extend for five years the program known as PEPFAR that funds treatment around the world for people with HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

When Trump reportedly complained that he did not want immigrants coming from "s---hole" countries, Smith spoke out.

"I don't want to repeat the word, but I go to those countries. I go to South Sudan, I go to Sudan, I go to places that are struggling, most of the Central American countries that were in his crosshairs on that comment. And they are great people.

"The biggest takeaway for me was how faith-based they are, how they love their families. It smashes every stereotype. Stereotypes are often cruel and misguided anyway," Smith said.

Former Rep. Steve Rothman said Smith is regarded as "a very honorable, hardworking member" by members in both parties.

"His lack of sizzle, if you will, is more than made up by his earnestness, and frankly his courage working for so many people around the world," Rothman said. 

Though the party said it was targeting him for defeat this year, Democrats over the years have focused more on other districts, supporting redistricting maps that gave Smith more and more Republican territory. The district he now represents, covering parts of Mercer, Monmouth and Ocean counties, is the most GOP-friendly in the state, voting 8 percentage points more Republican than the nation as a whole, according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index. 

Smith said he's survived blue waves before, especially in 1984, when Democrat Bill Bradley was running for U.S. Senate at the top of the ticket.

"Everyone said, 'You're gone,' and there were 100,000 ticket splitters in my district alone that year," Smith said. 

He attributes his success to his work, recalling the time he was miffed when an opponent called him the most overpaid case worker in Congress.

"I said I'm also a  lawmaker, you know. Now I take it as a compliment. Because I do turn a lot of casework into laws," he said.

Smith was criticized this year for not holding public town hall-style meetings with constituents. Asked about it, he launched into criticism of aggressive protesters, and later said he believed they would show up at public meetings so they could make recordings that used his comments out of context.

"People have been the most uncivil. I mean, I've had death threats. There's a guy that went to prison for 91 days. There's another 30 that could," he said, noting that at the suggestion of local police, he had cameras and other security measures installed at his district offices to protect the local staff.

"They called me the face of evil, and that's only the beginning of it. But they make threats. The lack of civility is something I find appalling. We've always had people who, and they were very much in the extreme minority, who took that path. And now it seems to be far larger," he said. 

"That's the new reality and I think we need to be sophisticated enough to say that's not the way democracy thrives," he said.

As a result, Smith indicated he would continue to have private meetings with constituent groups, or open forums with students at schools.

"I have meetings all the time with various constituent groups. I take questions. I did at least six high schools in the spring," he said. "I meet with people all the time. I work six days a week. I don't work seven, I work six though. And I'm happy do to it for my constituents. We solve problems."

Smith regularly touts his record of having dozens of bills he sponsored become law during his career, an accomplishment considering many other members can work years without passing a single bill. 

"I wanted to be here for decades because it does take a long time for most bills to become law," Smith said.

"In one of our debates, my opponent said legislation is not leadership. I said, 'We're a legislative body. It's what we do.' Yes we can be out in front, doing selfies and doing interviews, which are all part of it, I do C-Span, I do all those things. But the real crux of the matter is are you writing laws that make a difference in the lives of people? And I do."