Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ) outside the U.S. Capitol on January 26, 2023
Andy Kim has had two turning-point moments in his political career. The first came in 2017, when his congressman, Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-NJ), filed an amendment that broke a temporary deadlock among House Republicans seeking to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The MacArthur amendment would have allowed states to weaken the popular pre-existing condition protections that were a bedrock of the ACA.
Kim, a former national-security official, was so incensed by the amendment that he tweeted that he would run against MacArthur. “I had 21 followers on Twitter,” Kim joked in an interview with the Prospect. Yet he came from relative obscurity to win that race; he’s now serving his third term as a member of Congress, where he is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
The second turning point came a month ago. When Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) was indicted for public corruption for a second time, in this case for taking action on behalf of a series of businessmen in exchange for cash, gifts, and gold bars, Kim and numerous other New Jersey Democrats urged him to resign. Menendez’s response was defiant: “It is not lost on me how quickly some are rushing to judge a Latino and push him out of his seat. I am not going anywhere.”
There was something about the phrasing of that last sentence that stuck with Kim, he told the Prospect. “What rubbed me so wrong, it felt like he was saying, ‘I own this job, it’s mine,’” said Kim. “That’s a very different idea of service than I have. I feel like the job is for the people, we’re here to earn the public trust. And if we break that trust, we don’t get to stay here anymore.”
After reading Menendez’s statement, Kim turned to his wife and said that they needed to send their two kids to their grandparents for the night and have a long talk. The next day was his son’s eighth birthday, and Kim had to briefly step away from building a Lego set with him to write the tweet that launched his Senate campaign.
Sometimes, simply having the guts to jump in first is its own kind of leadership. Kim entered the race on September 23, giving him just eight days before the end of the third quarter fundraising marker. He still outraised Menendez for the quarter, with $1.2 million in donations compared to $900,000 for Menendez. Overall, Menendez still has a war chest of around $8.6 million cash on hand for the 2024 election, the primary for which is next June.
Menendez, who has not technically announced a re-election campaign, has stepped down temporarily from his position as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where Kim once served as a staffer. Last week, Menendez skipped a classified briefing on Israel and Gaza, which implicates Egypt’s Rafah border crossing. The indictment recently added a charge accusing Menendez of acting as a foreign agent for the Egyptian government.
Menendez said that he had “enough information to know what I need to do as it relates to supporting the state of Israel.” But sources have suggested to the Prospect that if a senator cannot attend a classified briefing, they cannot really conduct the full duties of the job. “I feel like it takes a lot in politics to shock me based on the last couple years,” Kim said. “He can have his day in court, but he can’t do the job with what’s needed.”
Despite pleading not guilty to all corruption charges, Menendez has already plummeted in the court of public opinion. A poll last week showed that 70 percent of New Jersey residents want him to resign. And in a head-to-head matchup polled earlier this month, Kim defeats Menendez 63-10. The poll was sponsored by the money-in-politics group End Citizens United, which is supporting Kim.
That’s about as lopsided as it gets in politics. But Kim didn’t clear his announcement with the county committee chairs who deeply influence New Jersey politics. (He’s talked to many of those leaders since, he said.) There are plenty of ambitious politicians in New Jersey, and Senate seats don’t open up all that often. Kim having the race against Menendez to himself is in no way confirmed, and if Menendez takes the unlikely step of resigning—or agrees to step down as part of a plea bargain—it will surely be a free-for-all.
If Menendez does run for re-election, the fear is that his weakness entices others to run, which could split the field and allow an indicted senator to prevail, despite being a doomed general-election candidate. Tammy Murphy, the wife of Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ), has been rumored as a candidate, though she has not yet announced. (The same poll from End Citizens United showed Kim beating Murphy and Menendez handily in a three-way race.)
Kim said he was focused on building his campaign rather than what others were doing. “I do believe I’m the strongest candidate,” he told me. “I won three of the toughest races in years in New Jersey. Trump won my district. I overperformed Biden by eight points in 2020. I’ve never lost a race.” Kim added that he is “battle-tested,” a glancing contrast with Murphy, a former banker who has never run a political campaign.
If he were to win, Kim would be the fourth-youngest senator in the country at 41 years of age, another potentially enticing contrast to the usual gerontocracy of both parties.
Given his background, I asked Kim about the Israel-Palestine situation, and while he resolutely condemned the “absolutely horrific” attacks by Hamas, the rest of his answer took on the air of a diplomat. “There needs to be a priority put on avoiding a wider regional war,” he said. “That’s something that keeps me up at night right now. I’m impressed to see Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken going around and building ties that can help navigate this, using our diplomatic might on the side of humanitarian crisis.” Yesterday, Blinken came out for “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza, in advance of any ground incursion or continued bombing campaign.
But while Kim’s credentials are mostly in the foreign-policy space—he has worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development, the State Department, the Defense Department, the National Security Council under Obama, and in Afghanistan as an adviser to generals, and in Congress he serves on the House Armed Services Committee—almost by necessity he has put ethics atop his agenda for the Senate. Like several members of both parties, he supports banning members of Congress from owning or trading individual stocks. “The American people need to know that decisions we’re making in Congress are about the interests of the American people, not potential personal benefits,” he said.
More broadly, Kim has the daunting task of restoring confidence in government in New Jersey, which has had more than its share of corruption scandals over the years, even setting Menendez aside. (Remember Bridgegate?) In describing his motivations, Kim went back to his kid’s birthday party. “My neighbors were talking about the news about Menendez, and they were saying, ‘That’s how it is in New Jersey.’ And then they said, ‘Oh, except for you,’” he chuckled. “I’m trying to instill in people that it doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have good government unless you have good people working in government.”
