Andy Kim will run for U.S. Senate

Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown), a three-term congressman and former Obama White House staffer, announced today that he will seek the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in a primary against indicted incumbent Bob Menendez.

Kim decided to run after Menendez rebuffed requests that he resign on Friday.

“After calls to resign, Senator Menendez said, ‘I am not going anywhere.’ As a result, I feel compelled to run against him,” Kim said. “This is not something I expected to do, but I believe New Jersey deserves better. We cannot jeopardize the Senate or compromise our country’s integrity. I believe it’s time we restore faith in our democracy, and that’s why I am stepping up and running for Senate.”

Kim, 41, became the first major Democratic officeholder to call for Menendez to step down after the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced their indictment of the three-term Democrat.

Menendez had previously said that he would seek re-election, and the defiant tone of his post-indictment statements indicate that he’s not ready to say he’s changed his mind.  It’s possible, if not likely, that a trial would not occur until after the 2024 election.

Gov. Phil Murphy, six Democratic House members, and a group of powerful Democratic county chairs, have urged Menendez to resign.

If the race for Senate does in fact come down to head-to-head matchup between Kim and Menendez, that would put Kim at an extraordinary advantage. Given the number of Democratic county chairs who have already called for Menendez to resign, Kim would likely be the favorite for every organizational line – the New Jersey system that lets county parties designate their preferred candidates on primary ballots – except for Hudson, Menendez’s political base.

But Kim’s gambit is still a risky one, because there are a lot of unknowns that have yet to be resolved.

Menendez may be resolute right now that he’s not going anywhere, but that could change quickly as pressure mounts. If, say, Menendez were to resign in two weeks and Gov. Phil Murphy appoints someone other than Kim to fill his seat, where does that leave Kim’s campaign?

And if Menendez remains in the Senate but doesn’t run for re-election next year, that would create an open-seat race in which Kim wouldn’t necessarily have the advantage. Several other candidates, including fellow Reps. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair), Donald Norcross (D-Camden), and Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff) and First Lady Tammy Murphy, could enter the race and swipe away critical party support from Kim, who has never been beloved by the state’s Democratic establishment.

Those are the questions to watch for in the coming weeks: will Menendez resign? If so, will Murphy appoint a caretaker or pick someone who will seek the seat? Is this a race against Menendez or someone else?

“The number of hours it took Andy Kim to decide to forego his own House seat and get into the statewide race tells you everything you need to know about how completely New Jersey’s political world has changed,” said Micah Rasmussen, the director of the Rebovich Institute of New Jersey Politics at Rider University.  “You could not have a better example of how differently Andy Kim’s mind works than other politicians.  He didn’t hire a pollster or gauge potential support.  When he sees a problem, his impulse is to spring into action and and help clean it up, as he famously did on January 6, and as he is doing today.”

Kim’s decision could be a problem for Norcross, who would find it more difficult to run statewide without a unified base in South Jersey.

Kim grew up in Evesham as the son of Korean immigrants.  He graduated from the University of Chicago and was a Rhodes Scholar.  He served in the Obama White House on the National Security staff after working at the U.S. Department of State and served in Afghanistan as a civilian advisor to two U.S. Army generals, David Petraeus and John Allen.

In 2018, Kim ousted two-term Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-Toms River) by 3,973 votes, 50%-49%; MacArthur had won the seat in 2014 after self-funding his own primary.   He defeated former Hill International CEO David Richter by eight percentage points in 2020.

Kim gained national attention when he was photographed picking up garbage in the U.S. Capitol after the events of January 6, 2021, and for speaking out after acts of violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.