Harold G. Hoffman

Hoffman enlisted in the Third Infantry of the New Jersey National Guard on July 25, 1917, shortly before the United States declaration of war on Germany. The division soon became the 114th Infantry of the 29th Division of the American Expeditionary Forces.[1]

He saw action in the Meuse-Argonne offensive and was promoted to captain on the battlefield before returning home.[1] He was eventually discharged in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

After World War I, Hoffman returned to South Amboy and became an executive with the South Amboy Trust Company. Over the next decades, he built a career as a prominent South Amboy businessman, serving as vice president of the Trust Company, president of a real estate corporation, president of a mortgage company, treasurer of another realty and investment corporation, and director of a building and loan association.[1] He became well known throughout the state banking community.[1]

In 1934, Hoffman initially considered challenging incumbent U.S. Senator Hamilton Fish Kean before being persuaded to seek the Republican nomination for Governor. Hoffman won the primary with a majority of the vote over State Senators Emerson L. Richards and Joseph G. Wolber and judge Robert Carey.[1]

In the general election, Hoffman faced his predecessor as commissioner of motor vehicles, William L. Dill. Dill was a political client of Jersey City boss Frank Hague. The campaign was low-key, with Hoffman avoiding strong stance on the issues and each candidate accusing the other of bossism.[1] Hoffman won in an upset, becoming the first Republican elected Governor of New Jersey outside of a presidential election year since 1898.[1] After his election, some accused Hague of selling out Dill to get Hoffman elected and branded Hoffman a "Hague Republican," but Hoffman's personal popularity nevertheless made him a potential contender for national office.[1]

Hoffman's tenure in office was marked by controversy and notoriety.

As governor, Hoffman got into at least two separate fistfights with reporters.

He entered office in the midst of the Great Depression and the transfer of authority from states and municipalities to the federal government via New Deal relief programs, but most responsibility still fell to state government to address the crisis.[1]

Among his first acts in office was to call for a state sales tax, an unpopular issue he had avoided addressing during the campaign.[1] The proposal for any new tax was opposed by most Republicans, businesses, and taxpayers' associations; Hoffman instead turned to Frank Hague and urban Democrats to pass the legislation, and only six months into his term, the "unholy deal" dramatically undermined Hoffman's popularity in his own party and brought the enmity of Essex Republican Arthur T. Vanderbilt.[1] In the 1935 Republican primaries, Vanderbilt's "Clean Government Group" made serious inroads, and Hoffman was forced to sign a sales tax repeal in October; he dramatically chose to sign the bill in red ink, symbolizing in his words, an "unbalanced budget and maybe hungry people."[1]

Hoffman drew further controversy on October 16, 1935, when he made a dramatic visit to the death row cell of Bruno Hauptmann, awaiting execution for the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr. Hoffman believed Hauptmann had not acted alone, and claimed to hope to convince the convict to reveal his conspirators.[1] He urged the other members of the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals, the state's highest court, to visit Hauptmann.

Just before Hauptmann's scheduled execution in January 1936, Hoffman granted him a thirty-day reprieve (while declaring he held no position on Hauptmann's guilt) and ordered the state police to reopen the investigation.[1] During that time, Hoffman gained further disrepute when detective Ellis Parker conducted an independent investigation in which Parker kidnapped and coerced Paul Wendel, a Trenton attorney, into confessing to aiding Hauptmann.

Hoffman attempted to grant a second reprieve, but it was blocked. Hoffman said he would not grant another reprieve, and after the Wendel matter was put to rest, Hauptmann was executed on April 3, 1936.[1]

Despite his declining popularity, Hoffman still harbored ambitions for the presidency, and his associates sought to first make him the undisputed favorite of the New Jersey delegation. However, strong sympathy for Alf Landon in the state and the continued opposition from Vanderbilt's Clean Government Group nixed his chances.[1]

Though Hoffman was elected as a delegate to the 1936 Republican National Convention, he barely defeated a vigorous campaign from former U.S. Representative Franklin William Fort for the spot, and the other three delegates were critics of the Governor.[1] The political blow left him an effective lame duck for the remainder of his term, and he focused on setting himself up to run for Governor again in 1940.[1]

In the 1937 election, Hoffman's preferred candidate for Governor Clifford R. Powell lost the Republican nomination to Lester H. Clee, a Clean Government luminary who made his opposition to Hoffman central to the campaign.[1] Clee narrowly lost the general election.

In 1940, having maneuvered himself an appointment as executive director of the state Unemployment Compensation Commission, Hoffman attempted to return to office as governor. This time, he had the strong and open support of Frank Hague, and he lost the Republican primary to Robert C. Hendrickson, another Clean Government candidate.[1] Hoffman refused to support the nominee, and Hendrickson lost the election to Charles Edison.[1]