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What It Will Take to Win Countywide Elections Again
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My opponent offers platitudes about "transparency" to start winning elections again. Transparency in a political organization does not win elections. A strong organization, and sound strategy and tactics win elections. All of those things must be based on experience and a clear understanding of Somerset County and its twenty-one towns.
To win, Republicans have to turn out our base better than the Democrats, and we have done that every year I have been Chairman. We must also win unaffiliated voters, which we have also done every year I have been Chairman. We need to double down and do even better.
Those of us on the SCRO campaign team actually doing the hard work of trying to win elections understand the following principles to be true:
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1: Somerset County's voter registration is now trending Republican for the first time in over a decade
2: Asian-American outreach is critical to our party's survival in Somerset County and NJ
3: The SCRO must run a lean and mean campaign
4: The SCRO has shifted from a mail and cable-based strategy to mail, digital, and texting
5: Our party MUST level the playing field on VBM, which has increased Democrat turnout in previously Republican off-years
6: Curbing overdevelopment is critical to the survival of the Republican Party in Somerset County
7: Experience matters
8: Candidates matter
Somerset County's voter registration is now trending Republican for the first time in over a decade
The GOP registration in Somerset County experienced a precipitious decline in the 2010s under my predecessor that led to the loss of the Republican majority in 2019.
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Somerset County's Republican registration deficit in the 2010s under my predecessor
After 2016, the Republican Party bled the support of two key groups that decide elections in Somerset County: college educated white voters (especially women), and Asian-American voters of all backgrounds. The first town to flip in 2017 was Montgomery, now an almost 40% Asian-American town, and one of our most educated. That year, the SCRO lost our first countywide election since 1989.
The losses continued at the county level in 2018 when two Republican incumbent freeholders lost their reelection, along with lost seats in Bernards and Hillsborough, two of our largest Republican towns. In 2019, hastened by factional in-fighting, the old guard lost our county Republican majority on the Freeholder/Commissioner Board for the first time since 1964. The only towns that Trump won in 2020 were Manville (54.2%), Branchburg (50.01%), Far Hills (52.64%), and Millstone (50.19%).
In the time since I was elected in July 2020, we have stopped the bleeding and turned the registration trend around. Somerset County's voter registration is now trending Republican for the first time in over a decade. Somerset Hills moderates who balked at Trump have realized how far-left the Democrat Party is and come home. Blue-collar voters in the swing towns along the river have become more Republican in recent years: Manville and Raritan are winning landslide elections, and Bound Brook (2:1 democrat registration and 53% Hispanic) is flipping seats red in Democrat wave years. Our greatest challenge lies in the southern part of the county that has undergone rapid overdevelopment and a population boom in recent years.
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Somerset County's Republican registration deficit during my tenure. For the first time in over a decade, the trend has reversed and Republicans are gaining ground.
Asian-American voter outreach is critical to our party's survival in Somerset County and NJ
As Chair, I have created a level playing field for all Republicans, and for people who would like to be Republicans. If we strive to make the SCRO a meritocracy, where the best people available win the nominations, win the offices and occupy leadership positions, then we will continue to expand our ranks into communities which were at one time not available to us.
Commissioner candidate Amber Murad and Vice Chair Ravi Kolla
As of the 2020 census, 34.6% of Somerset County speaks a language other than English at home. The fastest growing demographic in Somerset County is Asian-American voters. Montgomery Township, which experienced the sharpest Republican collapse from 2017-2020, is now almost 40% Asian-American. Bernards, Bridgewater, Green Brook, Hillsborough, and Warren are all 20% or more, and most towns are not far behind. Asian-Americans move to Somerset County because of our excellent schools and our safe communities. Fiscally conservative and hard-working, an increasing number of Asian-Americans in Somerset County are finding that their values align with our Republican cause.
Outreach is hard work. Under my leadership, we have and will continue to reach out to all affinity groups twelve months a year. We can't just show up every October and send glossy mailers and ask for votes. We have to be there year-round.
Our organization has had tremendous success with outreach to the East Asian community, who have seen first-hand the tyranny of leftism in the countries they emigrated from (just ask 2023 Assembly Candidate Grace Zhang). The Bridgewater Chinese American Association have been out in force knocking doors, putting up signs, and spreading the word in the community for Republican candidates, and elected one of the most conservative members of the Bridgewater-Raritan Board of Education fighting for parents' rights, Lucy Li.
The South Asian community has trended Democrat more than the East Asian community, and they are the voters that we most need to win over in order for us to win countywide elections. South Asian-American Republicans hold more leadership positions and county committee seats in the SCRO than ever before. Under my leadership, those leaders have opened doors for the Republican Party that were long closed to us. We will continue that movement on behalf of the GOP.
Connecting with these communities begins at the local level - there is a perception that Republicans are anti-immigrant and it is up to all of us to make some new friends and change that perception. When re-elected, I will continue to promote a meritocracy and to grow the party.
The SCRO must run a lean and mean campaign
Our organization used to dump hundreds of thousands of dollars into mail, much of that money on consulting design fees, and paid extra for humongous placemat mailers which are tremendously expensive. My opponent's campaign is doing the same, and using the same expensive consultants from before. Our SCRO campaign team writes and designs all of our campaign materials in-house, saving the organization tens of thousands of dollars each year. We pay only for the production cost of our campaign materials - printing mail, placing ads, and sending text and robo communications. The money we save allows us to stretch our dollars further and contact more voters, more often.
We contact our voters through more avenues than ever before. Our targeted digital ads match the voter list to low to mid-propensity and VBM Republicans and high-propensity unaffiliated voters and serve them ads across the entire Internet and television streaming platforms. We also utilize digital targeting to microtarget specific municipalities and voting districts on hot-button local issues. These targeted universes are contacted in a variety of different ways like mail and texting in addition to digital.
Targeted digital marketing is cost effective for a county of over 340,000 residents and approximately 230,000 voters. It is the way of the future.
"Microtargeted mail, text, and digital ad campaigns by the county GOP into Bound Brook on flooding and overdevelopment have helped us flip seats and elect Republicans in Democrat wave year elections. Tim has Bound Brook's unwavering support."
-Bound Brook Chairman Mark Speed
The SCRO has shifted from a mail and cable based strategy to mail, digital, and texting
In addition to expensive giant placemat mailers with huge consulting fees attached, the SCRO used to run cable TV ads which are extremely expensive and waste money hitting MILLIONS of people that do not vote in Somerset County. It is THE most expensive form of media, not to mention that many people, especially the younger generations, are increasingly abandoning cable altogether in favor of streaming, and are unreachable on cable.
The Howes SCRO targets lists of low to mid-propensity and VBM Republicans and high-propensity unaffiliated voters on Hulu, YouTube, and video ads across the entire Internet. Ads are not only matched to the IP address of the voter, but to their individual device - it differentiates between each member of your family and only serves the ad to the voter on the target list, and not their Democrat spouse. The SCRO runs video, static, and GIF ads across streaming platforms, YouTube, social media, and the entire Internet. In 2023, our digital ads were seen 586,492 times by voters in our target universes, at 5 cents per playthrough. We will expand on that success in 2024 and beyond.
The SCRO also targets voters through texting, like we have during this campaign. Texting is a useful and very cheap tool for turning out Republicans - we remind them to return their mail-in ballots, and we remind them to go to the polls. Texting - mixed with the time honored method of going door-to-door - allows us to contact the most Republican voters for the least amount of money.
Our party MUST level the playing field on VBM, which has increased Democrat turnout in previously Republican off-year elections in NJ
The Democrats completely changed the ballgame of New Jersey elections by making a significant block of their voters (36.5%) switch to voting by mail. Their 2018 Vote-By-Mail law automatically signed up any voter who voted by mail in the 2016 presidential election to vote by mail permanently, and as a result, more low-propensity Democrats voted in the 2018 midterms than ever before and wiped out all but one of New Jersey's Republican congressmen, including our own Leonard Lance. The VBM law functioned exactly the way the Democrats designed it to - to advantage their party.
The Democrats built on the success of their government-forced VBM signup with a MASSIVE signup campaign in 2021. The Democrat state party paid for a total-warfare harassment campaign of Democrats who only vote in presidential elections to get them to sign up to vote by mail. They contacted these voters relentlessly through mail, text, and other approaches and successfully harassed them into signing up for VBM. As a result, more Democrats all over the state of New Jersey are now voting in lower turnout elections than ever before, years that used to favor Republicans. The Democrats' statewide VBM signup program costed several hundred thousand dollars. From August to October 2021, approximately 10,000 low-propensity Democrats signed up for VBM in Somerset County. Bridgewater Councilman Michael Kirsh lost that election by 842 votes. The influx of low-propensity Democrats signed up to vote by mail are costing Republicans elections up and down the state, including Senate and Assembly races the party expected to win in 2023.
We have successfully piloted a VBM signup program in select towns in Somerset County where 7% of presidential-only Republican voters signed up after receiving a pre-filled VBM application in the mail with follow-up contact. Implemented countywide, that would extrapolate to 1182 additional votes - enough to get us over the finish line in a close election. The amount of money it will take to successfully execute a full-faceted VBM signup program will take a statewide approach as a unified Republican Party, and no one has been a bigger advocate of that to our state party than I have. I have taken these figures to Republican leaders all around the state, and the consensus is building amongst Republican County Chairs, legislators, and party leaders that a statewide VBM signup program is necessary in order for Republicans to win tough races.
The Howes SCRO HAS leveled the playing field on VBM chase - getting the voters who signed up to vote by mail to return their ballots. The Republican VBM return rate in Somerset County is higher than the Democrats', through a total-warfare campaign to contact these voters to return their ballots (mail, text, targeted digital ads, phone calls, door knocking).
Curbing overdevelopment is critical to the survival of the Republican Party in Somerset County
The single biggest reason this county has become so much more liberal is the recent population boom. We used to look a lot more like our neighboring Hunterdon County - farmland and forest, and more concentrated development in towns along the river. In the last few decades, we've gained 100,000 people, much of it high-density housing filled with Democrats. Worst of all, many people that we know and see at Republican political events profited from the sellout of our county's land to the developers.
Curbing overdevelopment in Somerset County is critical not only to our quality of life, but to the survival of the Republican Party. Overdevelopment is reined in by electing Republicans to your Township Committees and Borough Councils, and selecting anti-overdevelopment Republican candidates to run for those local seats as part of your responsibility as a County Committee member. For those of you who are running for County Committee for the first time, welcome to the fight!
Experience matters
I have chaired this organization for four years. Before that, I spent a decade as legal counsel to the state party, Senate Republican Majority, and Assembly Republican Victory. I have served as counsel to gubernatorial campaigns and one presidential campaign. In my practice, I have fought voter fraud and irregularity, and have overturned elections in court where they were affected by voter fraud and/or irregularity. I have served as a borough council president and as municipal chair.
Ask yourselves if my opponent has the experience to do the job. She has been the chair for less than two years of a town with five voting districts and a Republican registration advantage. Is that sufficient preparation to lead an organization that covers 267 voting districts in which the Democrats enjoy a 10-point voter registration advantage?
Candidates matter
We have continued to field outstanding candidates at the county level. To suggest otherwise is an insult to the organization and its nominees. In 2024, we held our traditional open nominating convention at the Somerville Elks. Approximately 275 Republicans attended. 228 voters heard from four candidates, and voted to nominate two outstanding candidates - Nick Cuozzo and Rocky Ganta. We will continue to recruit and nominate top candidates whose resumes uniquely qualify them for county office.
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