The congressman from the 5th District is Scott Garrett, a Republican elected in 2002 and the most conservative member of New Jersey’s congressional delegation. Garrett grew up on a farm in Wantage, where his parents grew tomatoes and Christmas trees. The family’s main income came from his father’s job as a salesman for Uniroyal. A conservative from the start, Garrett questioned his high school administration’s spending practices and kept a picture of David Stockman, the father of Reaganomics, at his desk. He graduated from Montclair State College and Rutgers law school, and became a trial lawyer in Sussex County. He is a born-again Christian who meets most Saturday mornings for three hours with a small group that calls itself Joshua Men. Read More

The congressman from the 5th District is Scott Garrett, a Republican elected in 2002 and the most conservative member of New Jersey’s congressional delegation. Garrett grew up on a farm in Wantage, where his parents grew tomatoes and Christmas trees. The family’s main income came from his father’s job as a salesman for Uniroyal. A conservative from the start, Garrett questioned his high school administration’s spending practices and kept a picture of David Stockman, the father of Reaganomics, at his desk. He graduated from Montclair State College and Rutgers law school, and became a trial lawyer in Sussex County. He is a born-again Christian who meets most Saturday mornings for three hours with a small group that calls itself Joshua Men.

In 1989, he was elected to the New Jersey General Assembly, where he quickly became one of the most conservative members. In 1998 and 2000, he challenged veteran U.S. Rep. Marge Roukema, a moderate Republican, in the primary. He attacked Roukema for supporting abortion rights and gun control laws. She emphasized her conservative votes on economic issues and was backed by the conservative House Republican leadership. Each time, Garrett carried the western part of the district, but Roukema ran strongly in her Bergen County base, winning by 53%-47% in 1998 and 52%-48% in 2000.

Roukema announced that she would not seek another term in 2002, and Garrett ran again. His challenge in the primary was to sell his views in Bergen County, where Sussex County is viewed as a distant province somewhere near Idaho. Two well-known Republicans from Bergen entered the race: state Sen. Gerald Cardinale and Assemblyman David Russo. They argued that nominating Garrett would put the seat at risk. But Garrett won the primary with 41% to 26% for Russo and 25% for Cardinale. Garrett won 81% of the vote in Sussex and 68% in Warren. But he won just 25% in Bergen County, raising Democratic hopes.

The Democratic nominee was Anne Sumers, a former Republican who switched parties in early 2002 and stressed her agreement with Roukema on most issues. With help from the national Democrats, Sumers attacked Garrett as an “extremist,” pointing to his support for limited federal aid to education. Garrett pounced on Sumers’ failure to vote in local school board elections and her musings on a liberal website, where she characterized American patriotism as “jingoistic.” Meanwhile, he soft-pedaled some of his more conservative views. Sumers outspent Garrett, $1.6 million to $1.3 million, including nearly $400,000 of her own money. But national Republicans spent heavily on issue ads on Garrett’s behalf. This turned out to be less of a contest than many people expected. Garrett won 59%-38%. In Bergen County, which cast 64% of the total vote, he led 55%-43%.

In the House, Garrett in recent years has rebounded from his vote against the Republicans’ Medicare prescription drug bill in 2003, a move that angered GOP leaders and limited his influence in the House. He has long pushed for a resolution that would require all legislation to cite an enumerated power in the Constitution, and he has pushed for to require congressional staff to receive annual training on the document. Because of term limits, he was due to rotate off the Budget Committee in 2011, but incoming Speaker John Boehner appointed him to serve another term. On the Republican Study Committee, the caucus of the House’s most conservative members, Garrett chairs the budget task force. He beseeched Boehner in January 2011 to keep the GOP’s campaign promise of cutting $100 billion in what remained of the fiscal year. In the November elections, he said in a letter to Boehner, “Voters heard our message of restoring fiscal responsibility, and they decided to give our party one more chance in the majority to get things right.”

Even though many of his constituents work on Wall Street, Garret opposed the bailout of the financial markets in 2008, saying he was “wary of using taxpayer dollars to prop up failing businesses.” In 2009, he leapfrogged other members and became the ranking Republican on the Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government-Sponsored Enterprises at the Financial Services Committee, which has authority over the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac housing finance authorities. He became chairman after the Republican takeover of the House in 2011 and made clear his intention to slow down and de-fund the agencies given new responsibilities for implementing the sweeping financial services overhaul law passed a year earlier.

Garrett has clashed repeatedly with ranking Democrat Barney Frank of Massachusetts. Frank complained that Garrett and his frequent ally, Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, set the tone for Republicans’ unwillingness to negotiate on the financial services overhaul, and as a result of their intransigence, the two “had no influence on the major parts of the bill,” Frank told The Record newspaper in July 2010.

Garrett has overcome some serious re-election challenges. In 2006, Paul Aronsohn, a former aide to Democratic Gov. Jim McGreevey, called Garrett “too extreme, too disconnected to the people he represents.” He raised nearly $600,000 and cut Garrett’s margin in Bergen to 51%-48%. But with more than 60% of the vote in Sussex and Warren counties, Garrett won 55%-44%. He sailed to victory in 2010.