Newsweek’s headline was “Donald Trump’s Candidate Handed Election Loss in New Jersey.“
“Trump endorsed Christine Serrano-Glassner just lost by 10 points. SAD!” is how the boorish “Republicans Against Trump” account X spun it.
The reaction to Tuesday’s U.S. Senate primary results from mostly not-based-in-New Jersey media like ABC News and commentary outlets was uniformally the same (even over at Fox News): former President Trump’s endorsee lost, so therefore the result is must be some species of bad news for the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee. At a time when all of the polling suggests Trump is winning, the Media establishment is delighted to seize on any evidence for the polling possibly being wrong.
That’s a garbage take, Save Jerseyans.
Allow me to briefly walk you through it:
First and foremost, Donald Trump remains immensely popular with New Jersey Republicans. The final polling before Nikki Haley left the primary showed the 45th president leading by as much as 65-points with 82% support. Is it likely that a supermajority of Trump supporters would vote against a candidate because Trump had endorsed her? Illogical.
Hotelier Curtis Bashaw won the nomination, in part, because he shared ballot columns with Donald Trump in key counties ranging from populous Camden and Passaic to deep red Cape May (which ultimately offset Glassner’s margin of victory in Mercer County). “The Line” – the Garden State’s unique political institution – is gone on the Democrat side of the aisle by judicial order, but a majority of counties retained GOP ballot lines for Primary 2024. Glassner did reasonably well in places where she had the line, too, but Bashaw entered Tuesday with more in his pocket and it showed.
Glassner also failed to capitalize on her endorsement at last month’s 80,000-strong Wildwood beach rally. At the time, I asked the question whether “if a Trump endorsement falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a noise?” It turns out the answer is “no.” Glassner raised less than $40,000 from donors other than herself in the first quarter of 2024; since the Trump rally endorsement, I received exactly one text from her campaign (a video of the big endorsement being delivered) and nothing else. No mail. No robocalls. No regular calls. No other texts. A TV ad did go up, but no real money was every put behind it. By contrast, Bashaw raked in over $1 million during the same period including a $600,000 loan. He was a constant presence in my mailbox and text inbox over the final few weeks of the race.
Had Trump endorsed in March instead of May? And Glassner managed to invest a few hundred grand in her own race, assuming she had the means to do so? Tuesday may’ve turned out differently. But she didn’t, so it didn’t, and now the rest is history.
Money still matters. Institutional support still matters. Glassner had neither in abundance. The Bashaw campaign was everywhere on a daily basis; she wasn’t.
Let the Narrative-pushers do their thing. They’re obviously bad at it. Here’s hoping they never improve!
