Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who once promised President Donald Trump his “undying support,” voted Wednesday night and Thursday morning to overturn the election results in Arizona and Pennsylvania in an attempt to prevent Joe Biden from becoming president.
Van Drew, R-2nd Dist., was one of 121 House Republicans challenging the results in a state that Biden won Nov. 3, the first Democrat to carry Arizona since 1996. The challenge was rejected, 303-121, after the Senate dismissed it by 93-6.
He also was one of 138 Republicans who supported the Pennsylvania challenge, even as the state’s GOP senator, Patrick Toomey, opposed it. That challenge, too, was rejected, 92-7, in the Senate, and 282-138 in the House.
Van Drew did not respond to requests for comment. He did not speak during either floor debate.
He told Fox News last month that the states acted unlawfully in changing election rules.
“Constitutionally, when you change the system and the way you are voting, you are supposed to have a meeting of the legislature,” Van Drew said at the time.
New Jersey’s other Republican House member, Chris Smith, voted against both challenges.
“Nullifying the electors of any state requires proof that electors were not ‘lawfully certified’ according to state laws,” said Smith, R-4th Dist., citing then-Attorney General William Barr’s comments that last month that “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
The votes were delayed to late in the evening and overnight as the Capitol was locked down and the Senate and House recessed when a mob of pro-Trump protesters stormed the building. They had come from a rally where the president first continued to claim without evidence that he had been re-elected and the election was stolen from him.
A majority of House Republicans, led by GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, continued to back the president. But most Republican senators did not.
“We witnessed today the damage that can result when men in power and responsibility refuse to acknowledge the truth,” Toomey said on the Senate floor. “We saw bloodshed because the demagogue chose to spread falsehoods and sow distrust of his own fellow Americans. Let’s not abet such deception.”
Van Drew also was one of the House Republicans who signed onto a lawsuit asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the election and re-elect Trump. The court dismissed the effort.
House and Senate Republicans have sought to prevent Congress from certifying the electoral votes in several battleground states and thus deprive Biden of the support needed to move into the White House on Jan. 20.
They threatened to challenge votes in other states, even as the fraud allegations were dismissed by dozens of judges and by officials in all 50 states who have certified Biden’s 306-232 Electoral College victory.
Van Drew was one of only two House Democrats who opposed both impeachment counts against Trump in December 2019, and then switched to the Republican Party after meeting with the president in the Oval Office.
He beat back a strong challenge from educator Amy Kennedy, a member of the iconic Democratic family, in November.
Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant.
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