Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield)’s lengthy medical absence from Congress, long a subject of conversation and speculation in his 7th congressional district, has now officially become an issue in his re-election campaign.
Your Community PAC, a somewhat shadowy super PAC funded by a variety of Democratic dark money groups, began a $289,000 digital ad buy this week that minces few words about Kean’s largely unexplained disappearance from public life. “Tom Kean Jr.: Wherever you are, do your job or get the hell out,” the ad’s narrator intones.
The ad echoes similar messaging being put out by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which began its own far smaller ad investment last week. Both ads focus in part on reports that Kean has continued to trade stocks during his absence; Kean’s office told NOTUS in April that the congressman has a “blind structure with his personal investments.”
Kean last cast a vote in the House on March 5, and what began as a footnote in Kean’s career – his office said shortly after he began missing votes that he was dealing with a “personal health matter” and would be back “soon” – has since exploded into a national news story. Kean has insisted he’ll be fine and will seek re-election, but has provided almost no information on what has been ailing him.
Given that Kean represents one of the most competitive congressional districts in the country, it was inevitable that his absence would eventually become an albatross on Kean’s campaign. The two-term congressman’s newly minted Democratic foe, Rebecca Bennett, has kept some distance from the issue – “I wish him well, and I hope he has a speedy recovery,” she said when asked about it at a May 12 debate – but outside groups haven’t felt the same need to be tactful.
Hitting back against Your Community PAC’s new ad, Kean campaign spokesperson Harrison Neely said in a statement that the congressman “has spent his career delivering for New Jersey lowering costs, standing up for families, and fighting for the communities he has always served.”
“Anonymous dark money attacks won’t change that record,” Neely said. “Rebecca Bennett needs to immediately denounce this outside spending, or she should stop pretending she is anything other than a hypocrite benefiting from the same dirty politics she claims to oppose.”
Your Community PAC, which did not respond to a request for comment, was founded late in the 2024 campaign cycle, and quickly became a significant player in the already-saturated world of Democratic super PACs.
The PAC spent more than $12 million supporting Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, and millions more on a variety of critical House and Senate campaigns. Kean is the group’s second target this cycle; the first was Matt Van Epps, a Republican who won an October 2025 special election for a Tennessee House seat.
The source of the PAC’s money is essentially untraceable, since it mostly comes from nonprofit organizations that aren’t required to disclose their donors. Of the $2.1 million the group has reported raising this cycle, $1.8 million has come from Sixteen Thirty Fund, American Opportunity Action, or North Fund, all three of which have been cited as major parts of the Democratic dark money orbit.