George Washington

Since 1824, when direct elections began, nine American Presidents never carried New Jersey: Martin Van Buren, James Polk, Abraham Lincoln, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush.  Of the ten best Presidents ranked by historians in a 2009 C-Span poll, New Jersey cast a majority of its electoral votes for all but Lincoln and Truman, and voted to support six of the worst: James Buchanan, William Henry Harrison, Warren Harding, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Pierce, and Hayes.

One of the ten best Presidents was a New Jerseyan, Woodrow Wilson, who served as Governor from 1911 to 1913.  Wilson carried New Jersey in his first campaign, but lost it when he ran for re-election in 1916.  Before the direct election of Presidents, New Jersey supported James Madison for President in 1808, but not when Madison ran for a second term in 1812.

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John Rutherfurd was 30 when he won a U.S. Senate seat in 1790.The youngest U.S. Senator from New Jersey was John Rutherfurd, who was just 30-years-old when he was elected in 1790. Rutherfurd had spent two years as an Assemblyman from Warren County, and was a presidential elector pledged to George Washington in the 1788 election. He won the seat of New Jersey's first Senator, Dr. Jonathan Elmer, who was returing home after two years in Washington. Rutherford was re-elected to the Senate in 1796, but voluntarily ended his political career at age 38 when he resigned in 1798. He held numerous appointed posts -- he served on a commission to determine the route of a canal that connected the Delaware and Raritan Rivers -- and practiced law until his death in 1840 at age 79.