Following the news that former Rep. Dick Zimmer, R-N.J., who died on Dec. 31 after a long illness, anyone reading about him for the first time would ask the same question: How could someone like that ever have been a Republican congressman?

In the age of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, it is hard to conceive of anyone like Zimmer, who was 81, surviving a Republican primary.

Unabashedly pro-choice, and a champion of children’s causes, and state-run campaign finance reform, the Garden State politician was inarguably what MAGA movers now dub a “RINO,” a Republican in name only. 

But Zimmer was a Republican from another time. After running two strong-but-losing U.S. Senate races — to Democrats Robert Toricelli in 1996 and Frank Lautenberg in 2008 — he became an early booster of Ohio Gov. John Kasich for president in 2016.

When Donald Trump became his party’s nominee, Zimmer endorsed libertarian nominee and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson for president.

Four years later, like his friend Kasich, Zimmer bolted to Democrat Joe Biden rather than support President Trump for re-election.

Zimmer’s great passion was campaign finance regulation. As state chairman of the liberal reform group Common Cause in the 1970s, he vigorously pushed limits on contributions to campaigns for state candidates and full disclosure of all donations to candidates.

But the New Jerseyan is best remembered as the chief sponsor of Megan’s Law, legislation which requires registration of convicted sexual offenders with law enforcement agencies when they move into a neighborhood.

Megan’s Law, named for 7-year-old Megan Kanka, who was raped and murdered by a neighbor with two previous convictions for sexual assault, passed the House and Senate without opposition and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

The son of a warehouse clerk whose husband died when the young Zimmer was 3, he was raised in a garden apartment in Bloomfield — “New Jersey’s version of a log cabin,” in Zimmer’s words.

He earned a full academic scholarship to Yale University and, in 1965, he caught the political bug as an intern for then-Sen. Clifford Case, the epitome of GOP liberalism at the time, who eventually lost renomination to a good-as-Goldwater conservative in 1978.

Zimmer edited the Yale Law Journal in law school and then joined the New York law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

He lost a bid for the New Jersey State Assembly in 1979, but two years later, he won a redrawn seat and did so handily. Four years later, he moved to the state Senate following the death of longtime GOP incumbent Walter Foran. In the 1980s, Zimmer worked closely with onetime legislative colleague and then-Gov. Thomas Kean.

Zimmer finally achieved his dream of serving in Congress in 1990. Following the retirement of Republican Rep. Jim Courter, Zimmer won a three-way primary in the 12th District of Sussex and Warren counties with 38% of the vote, defeating onetime New York Giants wide receiver Phil McConkey and Assemblyman Rodney Frelinghuysen.

As a member of the powerful tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, Zimmer was a pioneer in the creation of personal savings accounts for health insurance that Republicans today now push as an alternative to the Affordable Care Act.

Four years after his defeat in the Senate race by Torricelli, Zimmer made a bid for his old House district against liberal Democratic Rep. Rush Holt Jr.

He won a particularly nasty primary against former Rep. Mike Pappas, a conservative who had held the seat for a term and then lost to Holt.

In one of the nation’s closest House races in 2000, Holt eked out a win by 651 votes over Zimmer — whereupon Republicans in New Jersey and Washington began demanding a recount.

But Zimmer himself threw cold water on the idea. Noting that Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore was calling for a recount in his race with George W. Bush, he told reporters: “I do not intend to go down the path that Al Gore has taken.”

In his 70s, Zimmer still made his presence known about a return to the state Senate. But friends persuaded him that his endorsement of Biden in 2020 ended any chance of winning a Republican nomination for office.

So the former congressman threw himself into the 24-acre farm in Delaware Township where he spent most of his life with his wife, two children, 104 chickens, and one rooster.

His son Carl Zimmer, a popular science writer, recalled his father as “a talented golfer, a great cook, and a skilled craftsman who took pride in every project around the house.”

To that, one would have to add that, to his twilight days, Dick Zimmer remained a Republican from another era who steadfastly clung to the values of his party from that time.