New Jersey Republicans have a new leader after failing in their bid for the governor’s mansion and losing ground in the state legislature last year.
The state party elected Monmouth County Clerk Christine Hanlon as its next chairwoman on Monday, following the exits of former state party chairman Glenn Paulsen, the party’s vice chair, and its executive director.
Hanlon beat out former congressional candidate Rosemary Becchi, former Bogota Mayor and conservative activist Steve Lonegan, and activist Michael Currie. Only Hanlon and Becchi received more than one vote. Hanlon beat Becchi by a tally of 26 to 15 votes.
Monmouth County is one of the state’s largest GOP bastions. The county drew the second-most Republican votes of any in the state in 2025, and is a key area for NJGOP. But 2025 saw Republicans draw around 54% of the vote there, the smallest percentage since 2005. The last successful GOP gubernatorial winner in the state, former Gov. Chris Christie, drew around 70% of the vote there.
Voters recently elected Hanlon to her third consecutive five-year term in 2025.
The former longtime lawyer will be tasked with overcoming Jack Ciattarelli’s double-digit loss to Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) last year, which came despite optimism the party could build on the Republican’s close loss to former Gov. Phil Murphy in 2022.
Her efforts will start with the 2026 midterm elections. New Jersey has at least two competitive House seats, according to the Cook Political Report. The main focus will be on retaining Rep. Thomas Kean Jr.’s (R-NJ) toss-up congressional seat, while also darting their eyes over to Rep. Nellie Pou’s (D-NJ) congressional spot.
NJGOP will also want to capture Sherrill’s former House seat in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District. The seat had been in the GOP’s hands for decades under former Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen before he retired in 2018. Sherrill then captured his seat and won reelection three times in a row.
The rebuilding process will likely be challenging for Hanlon. New Jersey is already a blue state with a tremendous Democratic voter registration advantage of hundreds of thousands. While Ciattarelli received around 150,000 more votes in 2022, Sherrill clearly motivated the Democratic base.
The future governor drew nearly half a million more votes than Murphy drew in 2022, decisively silencing Republican competition until 2029. State Republicans and Hanlon will serve as a counterpoint to Sherrill in the coming years and hope to build back up to a respectable challenge when Sherrill’s up for election.
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After the state GOP chose her as chairwoman, Hanlon suggested the state party needed to be more invested at all times, and not just during campaign season.
“It is a year-round organization, not just at campaign time,” she said of the Monmouth GOP. “This is what I will bring to the table as state chair.”
