Former Senator Bill Bradley joined Sue Altman and Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) on the campaign Saturday afternoon in a basketball star-filled Hunterdon County rally.
Bradley, a basketball hall of famer who served as a senator in the Garden State for nearly 20 years, praised Altman’s political activism (and pro-basketball background) and said Kim’s national security background would be among the strongest of any senators, should he be elected. Bradley’s visit to the rally at a Milford dairy farm highlights Democratic efforts to not just secure Kim a seat in the Senate, but also to push Altman, a former state Working Families Party leader, past the finish line in the highly competitive 7th congressional district.
“Right now, at the presidential [level], I can’t believe it, but it’s very close, and that makes this congressional race in New Jersey that Sue is running even more important than it was before,” Bradley said. “Because God forbid if there ever is Trump back in the White House, we have to have a Democratic Congress to be able to be a bulwark against the radical actions that he is going to take.”
Bradley and Altman, of course, share an affinity for basketball. Bradley played for Princeton before being drafted by the New York Knicks and winning NBA titles in 1970 and 1973. Altman won conference honors while playing basketball at Columbia University and later played professionally in Ireland and Germany.
One of the 200 attendees yelled to ask whether Bradley or Altman would win a game of HORSE — they both insisted they would win, and the 81-year-old Bradley said, “Do you think these competitive instincts are dead?”
More relevantly, Bradley said their shared upbringing in basketball gives him a sense of Altman’s values.
“I wrote a book a couple of years back called ‘Values of the Game,’ which are the values you learn playing basketball: things like discipline, respect, imagination, unselfishness, responsibility,” Bradley said. “And I look at Sue not only just in basketball, but in her work for Working Families, in her campaign, she embodies those values that I think of the quintessential American values that ultimately appeal across the board.”
Saturday afternoon’s event was held at Bobolink Dairy & Bakehouse, a dairy farm in Milford — cows roamed in eyeshot of the stage. Clinton Mayor Janice Kovach introduced Bradley and the candidates.
Taking the stage, Kim joked that he wanted to tell the crowd about his “illustrious basketball career and what that has taught me in my life.”
Kim, who is expected to win his Senate campaign against Republican Curtis Bashaw, said Altman’s race is the most important in New Jersey — and one of the most important in the country — for determining the future of the House.
“When we think through all the things that we need to do, we know that we cannot accomplish what we need to in this country unless we control the House of Representatives,” Kim said.
The representative also referred to Democratic outside spending in the race, which was absent until earlier this week when Democratic groups announced millions in spending after weeks of pressure. Kim said he was in a similar position in 2018, when he challenged then-Rep. Tom MacArthur, but said organizing efforts overcame any financial or institutional disadvantages.
“I didn’t have the money that my opponent had,” he said. “I didn’t have that experience in that same vein that he did, but I had people just like you.”
Altman, a native of Hunterdon County, attacked Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), who she said has no “political courage.” The Democrat said she picked the phrase up from Bradley at an earlier event, and it’s a refrain she’s used for months against Kean, who hasn’t held public town halls and has talked with the press less often than her.
“Our democracy is not going to be saved by a guy who’s just nice enough, somebody who goes along to get along,” she said. “What we need is the political courage of not just me as a candidate or hopefully as your congresswoman in Washington, but the political courage of what it takes to come out and do the hard work every single day to maintain our democracy.”
With 10 days until Election Day, Altman said she is inspired by the desires that have unified members of her district at towns halls.
“We want a beautiful day,” she said. “We want open space. We want clean rivers. We want good public education. We want freedoms and rights. We want dignity. And that gave me hope, it truly did.”