In the immediate aftermath of last week’s state Republican Committee election, one GOP leader sized things up thusly:

“Steinhardt: 1

Ciattarelli: 0.”

That was the conventional interpretation of things after Michael Lavery won the chairmanship of the state party by six votes over Bob Hugin.

Lavery was close to outgoing chair Doug Steinhardt, who relinquished the job to run for governor.

Hugin was seen as a supporter of Jack Ciattarelli, the other main candidate (at least for the moment) for the 2021 Republican nod to challenge Phil Murphy.

In this battle of proxies, Steinhardt’s guy prevailed.

All that is true, but in looking at the Republican field from afar, it doesn’t seem tremendously inspiring.

The best candidate for the GOP may very well be the guy who lost the chairman’s race, Hugin.

Why?

Hugin ran statewide for the U.S. Senate in 2018, losing to Bob Menendez. Average people, who don’t follow politics day-by-day may have forgotten about that, but the fact remains that Hugin has to have a bit more name recognition than the other two.

Ciattarelli has been an Assemblyman and Steinhardt was state GOP chair. These are not highly visible positions.

Hugin, who apparently made quite the fortune in the pharmaceutical industry, also can be a self-funder, He spent millions in 2018. Granted, he may not want to spend that kind of cash again, but the possibility should not be discounted.

Menendez ended up winning in 2018 by a fairly comfortable margin despite having survived a federal trial on corruption charges. The trial ended in a hung jury and the charges were ultimately dismissed.

Hugin’s election problem was simple – Donald Trump.

Figuring out why people vote the way they do often comes down to speculation, or rather, just a guess. My guess is that Hugin lost because enough voters went with an ethically-challenged Menendez as opposed to a man who likely would have supported Trump in the Senate. It’s true that Hugin tried to somewhat distance himself from Trump.  But he couldn’t avoid the Republican label, one that Trump has more or less made toxic in New Jersey.

With Trump gone next month, Hugin presumably can challenge Murphy unencumbered by Trump.

Of course, there can be a problem here. Do Republicans really want to move on from the Trump era?

In that regard, Steinhardt’s introduction video was not encouraging. He bragged about being a Trump supporter.

That’s not the way to win a general election in New Jersey, but it could help in a primary. That’s the conundrum for Republicans in this state.

And that’s where leadership is needed – Republican leadership that sees the need to forget about the soon-to-be former president, his foolish tantrums about fraud, and focus on the present governor.

Whether new chair Lavery will provide that leadership is unknown; he did not respond to two messages left with his Hackettstown law office.

But for the sake of the two-party system in New Jersey, that type of leadership has to come from someone.