Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen announces retirement from the House

A top target for Democrats seeking to retake the House in November, Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen announced Monday that he will retire at the end of his 12th term next January, ending a career in public service that began when he went to fight in Vietnam in 1969.

Former Gov. Thomas H. Kean, a fellow Republican, said Frelinghuysen told him six months ago he “didn’t enjoy it anymore” and lamented that his colleagues were "so ideologically driven that they want to drive everybody into a corner."

A veteran of the House Appropriations Committee who took over as chairman last January, Frelinghuysen, 71, preferred to try to reach bipartisan consensus, and found that to be increasingly difficult, Kean said. The federal government is now operating on its fourth short-term extension of the budget that expired Sept. 30, and another deadline for a potential shutdown looms on Feb. 8.

Numerous top Democrats issued statements or gave interviews in which they emphasized that Frelinghuysen is a friend, a word used less and less in politics to describe members of the opposite party.

"Rodney was very old-school in the way he approached his obligation to be an effective representative," said former Rep. Steve Rothman, a Democrat from Englewood who often rode with Frelinghuysen to Washington on Amtrak. "But as appropriations chairman, he was conflicted by the demands of the Republican leadership to often take votes and positions that were not only anathema to the views of most of Rodney’s constituents, but also to Rodney’s personal sense of right and wrong."

Frelinghuysen initially opposed the Republican-crafted American Health Care Act, but then supported a revised version even as he said he hoped the Senate would make it better. In December, he opposed the sweeping tax overhaul that was one of the major legislative accomplishments of the GOP Congress and the Trump administration.

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After his vote against the health insurance bill and his vote against the tax bill, there was a push among conservatives to press Speaker Paul Ryan to strip Frelinghuysen of his chairmanship.

Frelinghuysen announced his retirement in a statement that highlighted his career but did not give a reason, beyond saying he expects to be very busy this year trying to finish the spending plan for 2018 and adopt a new one for 2019 using "regular order," the congressional parlance for a process of committee hearings and floor amendments.

Frelinghuysen's 11th District, which covers parts of Essex, Morris, Passaic and Sussex counties, is home to many longtime Republicans who turned from their party when Donald Trump was the presidential nominee. Though Mitt Romney carried the district by 5 percentage points in 2012, Trump won by less than 1 point. 

And because of its wealth and high property values, the district also will be one of the hardest hit in the country by the new tax law's $10,000 cap on the federal deduction for local property and state income taxes.

“I think he was torn,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., a Paterson Democrat who has served with Frelinghuysen for 21 years in Congress. 

“Rodney’s a loyal person. He was loyal to the Republican Party, he was loyal to the president, but I think the most important thing in the final analysis is you’re loyal to the people that you serve,” Pascrell said.

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Frelinghuysen's departure continues a trend of retirements by veteran House Republicans, including prominent committee chairmen, that have raised Democrats' hopes of retaking the House in November.

Activists have staged weekly demonstrations at his district offices, demanding he hold a public town hall meeting and resist Trump policies they opposed.

Several Democrats had stepped forward saying they wanted to challenge Frelinghuysen, including former prosecutor and Navy pilot Mikie Sherrill of Montclair, who had the backing of the party leadership in the four counties covered by the 11th District.

"This district is ready for change," Sherrill said Monday. "Every major piece of legislation coming out of Washington will hurt New Jersey, whether it's the repeal-and-replace health plan or the tax plan. We need a representative in Washington who's going to fight for the state and for the 11th District."

Despite his frustrations, Frelinghuysen appeared to be working toward his re-election. A report filed Friday with the Federal Election Commission showed he raised $362,000 during the fourth quarter of 2017 and spent $58,000 on mailers and $15,000 on opposition research.

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He had $1.2 million on hand at the end of the year, but Sherrill, who faces several challengers for the Democratic nomination, was gaining.

Sherrill's campaign said Monday that she will file a report showing she raised $486,000 during the quarter and had $822,000 on hand at the end of the year.

Doug Steinhardt, the chairman of the state Republican Party, declined to comment on possible successors, but he said there are “a wealth of solid, qualified, Republican candidates within the district,” which will remain a priority for the party.

One name already being floated was state Sen. Joseph Pennacchio, R-Morris, a former freeholder who has served in the Legislature since 2001.

“It’s under consideration,” Pennacchio said Monday of a possible run. “I need just a little while to digest what’s going on.”

Assemblyman Anthony Bucco, another Republican who lives in Frelinghuysen’s district, said he, too, is exploring a run.

“I’ve been around long to enough to know that you don’t just jump into something like this,” said Bucco, who has served in the Legislature since 2010 and is the son of veteran Sen. Anthony Bucco.

In Washington, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee issued a statement saying Frelinghuysen had spent months "ducking his constituents" and "now denied them the chance to throw him out."

At the opposing National Republican Congressional Committee, chairman Steve Stivers said Frelinghuysen will be missed.

"This district has been held by a Republican since the 1980s, and we plan to keep it that way in November," Stivers said.

Frelinghuysen, a resident of Harding Township, is part of a family that can trace its roots in Congress back to the founding of the United States. Indeed, the Congress that began last January is the 115th in history, and 31 percent of them have had a Frelinghuysen serving in either the House or the Senate.

His father, Peter Frelinghuysen, served 11 terms in Congress from 1953 to 1974, and his great-great-great-great-grandfather, Frederick Frelinghuysen, was a Federalist who served in the Continental Congress and was a member of the New Jersey convention that ratified the U.S. Constitution in 1787. His great-great-great-uncle, a one-time senator named Theodore Frelinghuysen, ran as Henry Clay's vice presidential candidate on the Whig ticket in 1844. 

In a statement announcing his decision to retire, Frelinghuysen mentioned his service in the Army in Vietnam — service he might have found a way to avoid, since his father was in Congress at the time — and his work on the appropriator to keep the military strong.

“My deepest devotion has been to supporting our Armed Forces, all volunteers, and their families, here and abroad, and those warfighters who have returned home with injuries and who depend on a functioning veterans’ health care system," he said.

Read the full statement below

He said he will work during the coming year to finish the stalled budget for 2018 and give members from both parties a chance to have input on the 2019 spending plan, which Trump is due to unveil next month.

“I have worked in a bipartisan manner, not just in times of crisis but always, because I believe it best serves my constituents, my state and our country," Frelinghuysen said in a statement.

"My father reminded me often that we are temporary stewards of the public trust. I have sincerely endeavored to earn that trust every day and I thank my constituents and my home state of New Jersey for the honor to serve and I will continue to do so to the best of my abilities through the end of my term.”

Staff Writers Nicholas Pugliese and Charles Stile contributed to this article.