Kim will support Duffy for Transportation Secretary

New Jersey’s two U.S. senators, Andy Kim and Cory Booker, face a tough choice with every Cabinet nomination that President Donald Trump puts before them. As liberal Democrats, both are unlikely to agree with most nominees on many issues – but they have to balance that against the fact that Trump is the rightful president, and that putting up a fight against every single one of his nominees might not achieve much.

With that in mind, Kim told the New Jersey Globe that he plans on supporting Sean Duffy to lead the Department of Transportation, a critical agency for train-, plane-, and automobile-heavy New Jersey, when Duffy comes up for a vote in the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee today. Duffy is the third of Trump’s nominees that Kim, who only joined the Senate last month, has said he will support.

“I had concerns, of course, about some of his past votes when it came to Amtrak funding, when it came to other actions that he’s done,” Kim said. “And look, I’m going to still stay on top of that. Right out of the gate, you heard me raise the issue of Gateway funding during the hearing, and a commitment on NJ Transit, especially from the Amtrak angle. [But] I need somebody that will work with me. He’s making all those commitments.”

During a committee hearing last week, Kim and other Democratic senators pressed Duffy over his past opposition to Amtrak funding; per NJ Spotlight News, Duffy cast a number of anti-Amtrak votes during his eight years in the House, including voting in 2015 to eliminate all Amtrak funding authorized by Congress. Kim also questioned Duffy on the Gateway project, a critical tunnel under construction between New Jersey and New York that Duffy voted to hobble in 2017.

When Kim asked Duffy – a former Wisconsin congressman who now lives in New Jersey – to specifically commit to supporting the Gateway project, Amtrak, and New Jersey Transit, Duffy declined to do so, but he did say he generally wanted large projects currently underway to be completed. And in one-on-one meetings, Kim said, Duffy has seemed receptive to his arguments on those issues.

“He told me that he understands it’s a priority, but he doesn’t know too much about the actual project,” Kim said. “I told him, come on out to New Jersey. I’ll show him around the Gateway project, and explain to him how this is very much underway, and stopping it would be disastrous for the country… He understood that.”

Kim’s support for Duffy did waver briefly after Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office pausing the distribution of funds appropriated under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which includes funding for the Gateway project. The order freezes the money for a 90-day period during which agencies will determine whether ongoing projects are in “alignment” with the new administration’s goals – a potentially huge headache for massive projects like Gateway.

In a follow-up statement provided to the Globe, Kim said that he ultimately decided to still support Duffy despite the executive order, but that he will keep a close eye on the likely soon-to-be Transportation Secretary to make sure he follows through on his promises.

“While I will be voting ‘yes’ on Mr. Duffy as he’s committed to me personally a willingness to work together on key issues of infrastructure, public transit, and safety, I strongly oppose the new Executive Orders made by President Trump halting funding through the bipartisan infrastructure law and other laws,” Kim said. “If he is confirmed, I will be pressing Mr. Duffy to follow the law and honor the commitments he made to New Jersey so that we can ensure projects like Gateway can be seen through.”

Duffy is one of a large number of nominees being rapidly moved through the Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-to-47 majority. Kim, along with Booker and every other senator from both parties, voted on Monday to confirm Marco Rubio as Secretary of State; Kim also voted to release Homeland Security nominee Kristi Noem from committee earlier this week and said he intends to vote for her on the Senate floor, too.

But there are some nominees whom Kim regards more doubtfully. He voted against Office of Management and Budget nominee Russell Vought in committee, publicly opposes controversial Defense nominee Pete Hegseth, and said that he has grave concerns about other national security picks like Director of National Intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard and FBI nominee Kash Patel.

“Generally, I am somebody that, when it comes to the executive branch, does think that the president does have some leeway to build their team,” Kim said. “I do think that that is a prerogative, and I would hope to see that courtesy afforded to Democratic presidents in the future. There is a limit, though. There are certain times when I feel like someone is lacking the moral character to be the leader of an organization like this.”

For the most part, though, Kim isn’t taking definitive stands on nominees, including Patel and Gabbard, who haven’t yet had the chance to come up for a committee hearing, especially those who will come before one of the committees on which he serves. That includes a few of the administration’s most controversial picks, like Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who will appear before Kim on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (though the Finance Committee is the one with the final say on Kennedy’s nomination).

Ultimately, Kim said, every nomination is a calculation: is the person someone who crosses any red lines for him? Are they someone he feels he can work with if they’re confirmed with or without his vote? How can he use his leverage as a member of the Senate to get nominees to listen to him on New Jersey issues?

“It weakens my ability to try to potentially get them to support certain things that I want them to support if they already know that I will support them or not support them,” he said. “I’m trying to think about [the nominees] as people that I may very well be working with for four years – is this someone that I can work with in that way? Even if I disagree, I’m going to need to engage with them, and they’re going to need to engage with me. That’s the approach I’ve been taking.”