Mr. Patterson was an associate commissioner for communications at the Social Security Administration, 2017–19. He also served as a speechwriter at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Small Business Administration under President George W. Bush. Bracketing his service to President Trump, Patterson was the 2016 Republican nominee in New Jersey’s first congressional district and a 2020 GOP candidate in New Jersey’s second congressional district.
When labor champion Theodore Roosevelt became president after William McKinley succumbed to an assassin’s bullets, establishment kingmakers such as Sen. Mark Hanna, R-Ohio, went into shock. Equally threatened when Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, the monied class suffered another coronary after the former president named Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, his running mate three weeks ago, sealing his commitment to remake the GOP into a working-class coalition.
