Andy Kim won’t be on the short list of candidates Gov. Phil Murphy is considering for an appointment to Bob Menendez’s U.S. Senate seat – and neither will any of the current members of the New Jersey congressional delegation, the New Jersey Globe has confirmed.
The decision to eliminate Kim and others as potential Senate caretakers stems from a conversation Murphy had with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Democratic State Chairman LeRoy Jones, Jr. about House vacancies while they were attending the funeral service of Rep. Donald Payne, Jr. in Newark on May 2.
Murphy asked Jeffries for his thoughts on filling Payne’s 10th district seat, and Jeffries – rather emphatically, according to three persons with direct knowledge of the conversation who spoke on the condition of anonymity – told Murphy that he needs “every vote he can get” in a House with a slim Republican majority.
It was Jeffries who pushed for a quick special election instead of waiting until November. The following day, Murphy ordered a special primary on July 16 and a special election on September 18, a schedule that was the quickest permitted under state law. That will likely result in a new Democratic House member, LaMonica McIver, taking office by the end of September.
Now Murphy is relying on Jeffries’ representation as he considers options to replace Menendez, the disgraced three-term senator who was found guilty of federal bribery and corruption charges last week. With no time left to run a special election, appointing Kim or any of the other seven House Democrats would leave Jeffries one vote short for the duration of the 118th Congress, which ends on January 3, 2025.
The current House has a 220-212 Republican majority with three vacant seats, including the one held by Payne. A seat in a solidly Republican district in Wisconsin will be filled on November 5. The third seat became vacant last Friday when Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee died of pancreatic cancer; the state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, has the option of calling a special election or allowing the seat to remain vacant until January.
In Texas, House seats can be filled in two months; if everybody moves quickly, New Jersey takes closer to five months.