TRENTON, N.J. – Brian Rumpf is the latest assemblyman to be featured in the Assembly Republican Office biography series. That video drops today.
Rumpf learned one of his greatest lessons from The Great Communicator himself. Ronald Reagan made time to chat with a then-19-year-old college kid from Jersey while he delivered mail in the White House on Saturdays, as if Rumpf were the only person in the world.
WATCH: It’s a family affair for Brian Rumpf
He carried that attitude into his own political career. “I can think of nothing better than going to the super market and running into people who have something they want to express or something they need help with. Sometimes that means you have to spend a half hour in the parking lot listening to somebody that’s very angry because their road didn’t get plowed as quickly as they may have wanted it to be.”
Rumpf, a Toms River native and long-time Little Egg Harbor resident, graduated from Catholic University of America and then earned his law degree from Washington and Lee University in 1989. He and his wife Debra, who met in law school, settled in southern Ocean County to raise their family. It was not long before Rumpf answered the call to public service, first as a committeeman in 1997, then mayor in 2000, and eventually assemblyman in 2003.
“This is a position of humility. We are there to be a member of a community and always try to give back to that community. You don’t do it for the glory or the newspaper headlines. You do it because you want to help people,” Rumpf (R-Ocean) said. “Being able to help people in their time of need is truly the proudest moment I can have as an elected official.”