By Kim Guadagno
Losing an election is difficult. Making a call to your opponent who spent the last few months and millions of dollars attacking you is the last thing you want to do as you watch the returns roll in confirming your defeat. Making that call after all your supporters worked so hard for you — while standing behind a podium with family and in front of cameras — makes it even more difficult. I know, because I made such a call to Phil Murphy on November 9, 2017, to congratulate him for winning the race for governor of New Jersey.
Gracefully conceding an election has become a traditional way to honorably bring closure to a hard-fought campaign. I made that call to Murphy not only to congratulate him, but to acknowledge what we have in this great country that others do not have: free and open elections. The orderly transition of power is the hallmark of our democracy and separates us from so many other countries.
I do not expect President Donald Trump to ever call President-elect Joe Biden and concede the 2020 Election. It’s simply not in Trump’s nature to admit defeat, having made it clear on so many occasions how he abhors “losers.” However, I do expect, as an American, the orderly transition of power.
Since the results of the national election have become clear, my Republican colleagues have been disturbingly silent on insisting that an orderly transition occur. Perhaps, they fear backlash from the president or his base, something I experienced in 2016 when I had the audacity to criticize candidate Trump after the publication of the Billy Bush Access Hollywood interview. That base is a formidable voting block. But I am sure of one thing, they put country before politics.
Allowing President Trump to continue his campaign to undermine this election while denying President-elect Biden access to critical intelligence on the pandemic and national security, while Republicans sit on their hands, is not only cowardly and shameless but it poses a risk to the health and safety of our citizens. Biden’s claim that more people may die if Trump continues to refuse to cooperate on the transition is not election year hyperbole — it is a fact as our people are now dying at the rate of 1,000 per day.
The time has come for all of us to stand up and demand that Trump “make that call” and cooperate with the incoming Biden administration to allow a seamless transition of power as the framers of our constitution intended. The election is over. Time to move on.
Kim Guadagno is the first lt. governor of New Jersey, a committed Republican, and these views are her own.
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