Rodney Frelinghuysen

On his mother's side, he is a great-great-grandson of William Procter, co-founder of Procter & Gamble and grandson of William Cooper Procter, the president of Procter & Gamble from 1907 to 1930.

He attended St. Mark's School, an exclusive Episcopal preparatory school in Southborough, Massachusetts.

Rejected by Princeton, the alma mater of his father and grandfather, Frelinghuysen instead matriculated at Hobart College in New York.

Rodney Procter Frelinghuysen (born April 29, 1946) is an American former politician and lobbyist who served as the U.S. representative for NJ's 11th congressional district from 1995 to 2019.

The district includes most of Morris County, an affluent suburban county west of New York City.

His father, Peter Frelinghuysen Jr.., served as the U.S. representative from New Jersey's 5th congressional district from 1953 to 1975, representing much of the same area Rodney did during his time in Congress.

On his father's side, he is a great-grandson of American Sugar Refining Company founder Henry Osborne Havemeyer and great-great-great-grandson of Ballantine Brewery founder Peter Ballantine.

There, he served as president of the Kappa Alpha Society and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in American history in 1969.

Frelinghuysen next enrolled in a graduate program at Trinity College but was soon drafted into the United States Army.

He held this position until 1974, when he was elected as a Morris County Freeholder in his own right.

He served three terms on the board, the last as its director.

In 1983, Frelinghuysen was elected to the New Jersey General Assembly, representing the 25th legislative district.

He was Chairman of the Assembly Appropriations Committee during the 1988–89 legislative session.

In 1990 he ran in the Republican primary for New Jersey's 12th congressional district against Dick Zimmer and Phil McConkey.

During the race, the Frelinghuysen campaign "broke ground in high-tech politicking" when it sent voters a seven-minute video cassette of Frelinghuysen.

The video, which contained photographs of Frelinghuysen in Vietnam and praise from former Gov. Tom Kean, served as a preemptive tactic against opponents' attempts to characterize Frelinghuysen as "an irrelevant debutante".

Frelinghuysen finished in third place.

Following basic training at Fort Dix, he was assigned as a clerk to the commanding officer of the 93rd Engineer Battalion, which was primarily responsible for building roads and water supply systems in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam.

After his military service, Frelinghuysen was hired by then-Morris County Freeholder Director Dean A. Gallo to be the county's state and federal aid coordinator and administrative assistant.

Frelinghuysen served in the Assembly until 1994.

In late August 1994, U.S. Congressman Dean Gallo, the six-term Republican incumbent of New Jersey's Eleventh Congressional District, announced his intention to withdraw from the upcoming election for medical reasons (he had recently been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer and died two days before the election).

As Gallo had already defeated three opponents in a hard-fought primary the previous June, his withdrawal triggered a convention of Republican committee members from the district's municipalities.

Frelinghuysen, who had been Gallo's former employee and fellow Morris County freeholder and state assemblyman, sought the committee's nomination at Gallo's request, and was chosen to be the Republican nominee for the district.

Frelinghuysen went on to defeat former Democratic State Senator Frank Herbert 71% to 28% in the November 1994 election.

He has been challenged in the Republican primary three times: in 2008, 2010, and 2014.

In 2008, he defeated Kate Erber in the June primary 87% to 13%.

In 2010, he defeated Richard Luzzi 76% to 24%.

This came even as his district was made slightly friendlier to Democrats on paper after the 2010 census, when it absorbed slices of heavily Democratic Montclair, Bloomfield and West Orange.

However, the 11th had long been one of the most Republican districts in the Northeast, and Frelinghuysen had effectively clinched a seat in Congress by winning the Republican nomination.

He was reelected nine times with no substantive opposition, never dropping below 59% of the vote.

In 2014, he defeated Rick Van Glahn 67% to 33%.

He endorsed Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

He voted to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and replace it with the American Health Care Act (AHCA).

Frelinghuysen was criticized for using a fundraising letter to "[out] a member of an activist group opposing him to her employer" which resulted in a complaint by the Campaign for Accountability made with the Office of Congressional Ethics.

Frelinghuysen was born in New York City to Peter Frelinghuysen Jr.., a New Jersey politician and Beatrice Sterling Procter, an heir to the Procter & Gamble fortune.

Frelinghuysen is a member of a family long prominent in New Jersey politics, one which was ranked the seventh greatest American political dynasty by Stephen H. Hess, senior fellow emeritus at the Brookings Institution, and author of "America's Political Dynasties".

A member of the Republican Party, Frelinghuysen served as chair of the House Appropriations Committee from 2017 to 2019.

Frelinghuysen announced on January 29, 2018, that he would not seek re-election that year.

He has at times supported abortion rights and at times voted to limit access to abortion.

He opposed federal funding of Planned Parenthood, and opposed sanctuary cities, gun control, gay marriage, and federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.