Former New Jersey U.S. Representative, U.S. Senate nominee Dick Zimmer has died
Zimmer was also a state legislator.
Dick Zimmer was a prominent Republican politician in New Jersey who later became an outspoken critic of the Trump wing of the party. He passed away on December 31, 2025. A cause of death was not immediately released to the public, but he had evidently been ill for some time.
Zimmer began his career in politics as a staffer for U.S. Senator Clifford P. Case. In 1981, he won the first of three campaigns for the New Jersey General Assembly. Six years later, Zimmer won a special election for a seat in the New Jersey Senate held after Walter E. Foran died from lung cancer.
Following a successful re-election bid to the State Senate, Zimmer secured a seat in the United States House of Representatives via the 12th District of New Jersey, which at the time included Princeton. He won two more races for the House afterward.
In 1996, Zimmer ran for one of New Jersey’s seats in the United States Senate, losing by a considerable margin to Democratic fellow U.S. Representative Robert Torricelli. He later made a comeback in 2008, once again becoming the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, but he also again came up well short in the general election, on that occasion to Democratic incumbent Frank Lautenberg.
Zimmer was later appointed to a position in the administration of Governor Chris Christie. In 2021, he was briefly a candidate for a return to the State Senate before withdrawing his name from consideration.
Richard Alan Zimmer was a native of Newark and graduated from high school in nearby Glen Ridge, New Jersey. His father died from a heart attack when he was a toddler. The younger Zimmer later obtained degrees in political science and law from Yale University.
In 1965, Zimmer married Mary Goodspeed. The couple would have two sons.