in a graduate program at Trinity College but was soon drafted into the United States Army. Following basic training at Fort Dix, he was assigned as a clerk to the commanding officer of the 93rd Engineer Battalion, which was primarily responsible for building roads and water supply systems in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. Local and state political career After his military service, Frelinghuysen was hired by then-Morris County Freeholder Director Dean A. Gallo to be the county's state and federal aid coordinator and administrative assistant. He held this position until 1974, when he was elected as a Morris County Freeholder in his own right. He served three terms on the board, the last as its director. In 1983, Frelinghuysen was elected to the New Jersey General Assembly, representing the 25th legislative district. Frelinghuysen served in the Assembly until 1994. He was Chairman of the Assembly Appropriations Committee during the 1988–89 legislative session. In 1990 he ran in the Republican primary for New Jersey's 12th congressional district against Dick Zimmer and Phil McConkey. During the race, the Frelinghuysen campaign "broke ground in high-tech politicking" when it sent voters a seven-minute video cassette of Frelinghuysen. The video, which contained photographs of Frelinghuysen in Vietnam and praise from former Gov. Tom Kean, served as a preemptive tactic against opponents' attempts to characterize Frelinghuysen as "an irrelevant debutante". Frelinghuysen finished in third place. U.S. House of Representatives Elections In late August 1994, U.S. Congressman Dean Gallo, the six-term Republican incumbent of New Jersey's Eleventh Congressional District, announced his intention to withdraw from the upcoming election for medical reasons (he had recently been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer and died two days before the election). As Gallo had already defeated three opponents in a hard-fought primary the previous June, his withdrawal triggered a convention of Republican committee members from the district's municipalities. Frelinghuysen, who had been Gallo's former employee and fellow Morris County freeholder and state assemblyman, sought the committee's nomination at Gallo's request, and was chosen to be the Republican nominee for the district. Frelinghuysen went on to defeat former Democratic State Senator Frank Herbert 71% to 28% in the November 1994 election. However, the 11th had long been one of the most Republican districts in the Northeast, and Frelinghuysen had effectively clinched a seat in Congress by winning the Republican nomination. He was reelected nine times with no substantive opposition, never dropping