It was the stream of Sen. Bob Menendez’s self-serving and defensive remarks to his latest federal corruption indictment that proved to be the “tipping point” for Rep. Andy Kim, the South Jersey Democrat who is vowing to replace Menendez next year.
Kim, a Korean American from Burlington County, found Menendez’s playing the race card particularly irksome. But it was Menendez’s blunt declaration — “I’m not going anywhere” — that prompted Kim to take the leap and take on the powerful and much-feared powerhouse from Hudson County.
“It felt like he was saying that he owns that job — that it is his,” Kim said in an interview with NorthJersey.com and The Record last week. “But I have a very different perspective about public servants. I, for one, believe that these jobs are owned by the people.”
That image of a 41-year-old Kim — of the humble public servant infused with idealism — is very much the image he has cultivated since launching his grueling campaign to unseat Republican Tom MacArthur in the “blue wave” midterms of 2018. And we saw the same image of Kim in his viral moment gathering debris from the floor of the Capitol Rotunda after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, a moment that landed the little-known lawmaker on cable news and his dirtied suit in the Smithsonian.
Yet that image belies the steely, shrewd and ambitious political operative now at the forefront of the conversation to replace the embattled Menendez, says one Republican who dueled with him over the last six years.
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Although the field can change — and likely will in the coming months — Kim finds himself the front-runner for the job, stocked with a surge of $1 million in donations and a new survey showing him with a 6-1 lead over Menendez in a hypothetical matchup and with 2-1 lead over Tammy Murphy, the governor’s wife, who is pondering a possible…
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