Rep. Andy Kim’s (D-Moorestown) most recent Senate campaign ad pays homage to the opening credits of The Sopranos, with Kim saying he’ll tackle corruption in the Garden State.
And while some of the landmarks used in The Sopranos are seen, the campaign added its own flair: B-roll footage of New Jersey’s statehouse and Drumthwacket, the governor’s mansion, is also featured in the TV advertisement. Political admakers typically sweat out every shot in a 30-second TV ad.
The relationship between Kim and Gov. Phil Murphy appears coarse from the outside. Kim, of course, forced Murphy’s wife to drop her Senate bid, and the governor has yet to endorse Kim by name while denying the existence of discord.
Kim said Sunday afternoon that he didn’t take a close enough look at the ad to notice the inclusion of the governor’s residence and that the b-roll wasn’t a dig toward the governor.
“I’m not even aware of that,” said Kim. “I didn’t take a close enough look to see it, so it was not, at least on my end, intentional.”
Micah Rasmussen, the director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, said the inclusion of Drumthwacket in the ad was likely purposeful, but it could have more to do with Kim’s fight against the state’s political establishment than any personal rivalries. Rasmussen said the ad, which also features the statehouse behind the iconic “Trenton Makes” sign, featured a message consistently used since the beginning of the campaign.
“Andy Kim has made it clear that he is running against the entrenched political system, and he probably has done as much as anyone else to dismantle the entrenched political system,” Rasmussen told the New Jersey Globe. “And so that certainly goes not just for the current occupant of Drumthwacket, but for the many past occupants of Drumthwacket.”