By Kevin Coughlin
Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11th Dist.), a critic of Donald Trump who later supported him, said Thursday he is upbeat about the future.
“I think we’re all going to work together. We have a responsibility to govern. The House and Senate are going to be part of the transition and I feel optimistic. I have a very positive view for what lies ahead,” said Frelinghuysen, who was re-elected on Tuesday to his 12th term.
The Congressman spoke with MorristownGreen.com at a Morris County Tourism event at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Morristown.
Asked if was stunned by Trump’s victory, Frelinghuysen answered: “Absolutely.”
Virtually all the pundits and pollsters “were flat wrong,” he said.
Frelinghuysen was “very unenthusiastic” about Trump last spring, telling schoolchildren “you can’t be president if you insult 52 percent of the population.”
After the primary, citing party loyalty, the Harding resident backed Trump, telling a newspaper he considered the reality TV celebrity “fit to be president.”
Democratic congressional candidate Joe Wenzel knocked Frelinghuysen for that, in hopes of capitalizing on an anti-Trump backlash in what many perceived as a deeply divided GOP.
Instead, Republicans emerged from Election Day with the White House and both houses of Congress. And Frelinghuysen won 63 percent of the vote, and a shot at becoming chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee.
LIGHTING CANDLES
On Wednesday, one night after the election, some Greater Morristown residents gathered at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer to share their fears about Trump and light candles for peace.
Rector Cynthia Black expressed a “profound experience of loss…and a sense of fear of the unknown.”
A peace vigil is planned for the Morristown Green at 6 pm on Friday, Nov. 11, 2016.
The race between Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton wasn’t pretty, Frelinghuysen acknowledged.
“I thought the discourse was pretty coarse and low for both the Democratic and Republican side,” Frelinghuysen said.
But he credited the President-elect with galvanizing “the forgotten people” to vote.
“We have a new leader. We need to get behind him. I sort of take a page out of what the President said: We’re going to have a quiet and professional transition from one administration to another. [Trump’s] also going to be our commander-in-chief.”
With a normal candidate, I can see the whole “getting behind the president”. Trump is not a normal candidate. Across the country kids are getting bullied, muslims are having their headscarves ripped from their heads, hispanics are being told to “go back home”, and black folks are being called Ni***ers. Why? Trump has taken all this latent racism and hate and told half the country it’s OK, especially now that he’s won.
So no, I’m not getting behind him. He has to get behind the more than half the country that voted against him. He has to prove he’s fit to lead. He has to tell his supporters that they need to lay off all the hate he stirred up.
Frelinghuysen has also helped convince me that I really need to volunteer to work for his opponent in the next election.