Dick Zimmer, a three-term Republican congressman from New Jersey who sponsored the landmark legislation know as Megan’s Law, requiring states to disclose where convicted sex offenders are living, died on Wednesday at a nursing care facility in Flemington, N.J. He was 81.
His son Ben Zimmer said the cause was myelodysplasia, a blood disorder.
A fiscal conservative who lost two bids for the U.S. Senate — including one that is considered to be among the nastiest campaigns in recent U.S. history — Mr. Zimmer broke with his party by supporting Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s candidacy for president against Donald J. Trump in 2020.
First elected to the House of Representatives in 1990, Mr. Zimmer sponsored Megan’s Law after the 1994 rape and murder of 7-year-old Megan Kanka in Hamilton Township, N.J., east of Trenton. Her family had been unaware that her killer, a twice-convicted sex offender, had recently moved in across the street.
The bill was based on similar legislation adopted in New Jersey and in other states. It was passed unanimously by the House and Senate and signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. States and local municipalities set up websites listing the addresses of sex offenders.
“We respect people’s rights, but today, America proclaims there is no greater right than a parent’s right to raise a child in safety and love,” President Clinton said at the time. “Today, America warns: If you dare to prey on our children, the law will follow you wherever you go, state to state, town to town.”
The federal law has largely survived constitutional challenges by sex offenders, who have argued that it violated their privacy and amounted to lifelong punishment.
Richard Alan Zimmer was born on Aug. 16, 1944, in Newark. His father, William Zimmer, was a physician and died when Dick was 3. His mother, Evelyn (Rader) Zimmer, supported the family by working as clerk at a biscuit warehouse in Bloomfield, N.J.
The family moved to nearby Glen Ridge after Evelyn married Howard Rubin, a postal worker. As a teenager, Dick was obsessed with science.
“One day, we’ll have a man on the moon,” he announced during dinner one night, his stepfather recalled in a 1996 interview with The New York Times.
Dick initially majored in chemistry at Yale University, but switched to political science. Enthused by the ideas of the free-market economist Milton Friedman, he became a Republican — a shock to his family of lifelong Democrats.
After graduating in 1966, he stayed at Yale for law school, serving as an editor of its law review.
Mr. Zimmer worked as a lawyer in private practice in New York for several years. In 1974, he became chairman of New Jersey Common Cause, leading an effort to increase government transparency. Two years later, he joined Johnson & Johnson, based in New Brunswick, N.J., as a lawyer.
In 1981, he was elected to the New Jersey General Assembly. He later became a state senator before winning New Jersey’s central 12th District seat in the House.
Following two successful bids for re-election, Mr. Zimmer challenged Robert Torricelli, a Democrat, for Senator Bill Bradley’s seat in 1996. The campaign was exceptionally bitter.
Mr. Zimmer called his opponent “ethically challenged” and “foolishly liberal.” An ad from Mr. Torricelli’s campaign suggested that Mr. Zimmer was in favor of teenage drinking and driving.
“The campaign has become one of the nastiest in America — which is actually not an unusual distinction for a New Jersey race,” John Tierney wrote in The New York Times Magazine.
Mr. Zimmer lost the election by more than 290,000 votes.
In 2000, he ran for his old House seat but lost to Rush Holt, a Democrat, by fewer than 700 votes. Eight years later, Mr. Zimmer lost a race for the U.S. Senate to the incumbent, Frank Lautenberg, also a Democrat.
He returned to private practice and also taught at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Before entering the nursing facility, he had lived on his family’s farm near Flemington, north of Trenton.
Mr. Zimmer married Marfy Goodspeed in 1965. In addition to their son Ben, she survives him, along with another son, Carl; three grandchildren; and his sisters, Barbara Zimmer, Ilene Hyman and Susan Rubin.
In 2020, Mr. Zimmer explained his support for Mr. Biden in a column for The Star-Ledger in Newark.
“I joined the Republican Party,” he wrote, “because I believed in its traditional principles: free trade, strong international alliances, civil rights, national unity and the view of immigration that Ronald Reagan expressed in his last speech as president: ‘If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.’”
In Mr. Zimmer’s view, Mr. Trump wasn’t a true Republican and didn’t have the character to be president.
“When Joe Biden and I served in Congress, we hardly agreed on any major issue, and I expect to disagree with him on a lot in the future,” he wrote. “However, unlike President Trump, Biden understands the role of the president in our Constitutional system and will try to find common ground.”
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