Top Republican who once held big power in Trenton dies

Former New Jersey Assembly Speaker Garabed “Chuck” Haytaian, one of the leading figures of the Republican wave that took over Trenton in the 1990s and an influential lawmaker for more than two decades, has died at age 86, state officials said Friday.
A cause of death is unclear, though Haytaian reportedly suffered health issues in recent months, officials said.
A lawmaker from the northwestern corner of the state, Haytaian was both affable and blunt, loyal to his party, and sometimes combative with the press — a precursor of sorts to some modern politicians.
Haytaian — pronounce Hi-TIE-an — assumed the top post of the state Legislature’s lower house in 1992 as Republicans took control of both chambers in a voter revolt over Democratic Gov. Jim Florio’s $2.8 billion in tax increases. Republican Christie Whitman ousted Florio in the next gubernatorial election.
Haytaian later ran for U.S. Senate in 1994, when he unsuccessfully tried to unseat Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg, falling by only 3 percentage points. Haytaian was then chairman of the New Jersey Republican Party from 1995 to 2001.
“New Jersey has lost a giant, and I have lost a dear friend,” Assembly Minority Leader John DiMaio, a fellow Warren County Republican, said in a statement. “Chuck was the heart and soul of New Jersey politics. His tireless commitment to this state inspired everyone around him, including me.”
Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, said Haytaian had a “storied career of service to New Jersey,” becoming “a household name across the Garden State.”
Haytaian was born in the Bronx in 1938 to parents who were survivors of the Armenian genocide. He later worked several odd jobs to pay his way through college and ultimately received his degree in electrical engineering from the University of Alabama. He worked at several engineering firms but also ran a dry cleaning business for 16 years.
Politics beckoned in the 1970s. Haytaian was elected to the Mansfield school board and then a Warren County freeholder in 1976. He was elected to the Assembly four years later, in 1981.
Haytaiain later was both majority and minority leader of the chamber before becoming speaker in 1992 — a position he held for four years, until 1996. During his time in the job — one of New Jersey’s highest-ranking — Republicans controlled both the governor’s office and Legislature in the now-blue state.
As speaker, Haytaian helped usher through Whitman’s income tax cuts, led a battle to roll back the state sales tax by a cent, and fought for the nation’s first legally mandated Holocaust education program.
But Haytaian lost his 1994 U.S. Senate bid to Lautenberg, then a two-term senator, even though Republicans — two years into Democrat Bill Clinton’s presidency — took control of Congress for the first time in 40 years.
“I truly hope for the people of New Jersey and the people of the United States that Sen. Lautenberg has learned from this campaign that people want the government to cut spending, cut taxes and fight crime,” Haytaian said after his loss. “And most of all, they don’t want the government wasting their money.”
After that race, Haytaian declined to see a seventh term to the Assembly and instead became head of the state GOP. He ran for Assembly again in 2003 but finished third in the Republican primary.
When Haytaian left the speakership in 1996, Whitman praised him for having “delivered on an agenda.”
“He is a man of his word,” the then-governor said.
Haytaian’s exit, though, was mired in controversy. In 1996, Beth Herbert, a legislative staffer, sued Haytaian for sexual harassment, claiming he kissed and fondled her several times between 1994 and 1995. Haytaian denied the allegations countersued her for defamation.
Both suits were dropped when the state paid Herbert a $175,000 settlement. The state also paid $170,000 in legal fees to defend Haytaian.
NJ Advance Media Research Editor Vinessa Erminio contributed to this report.
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Brent Johnson may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @johnsb01.