Democrat Andy Kim Wins Nj Senate Primary, But Bob Menendez Still Poses A Threat

Rep. Andy Kim, a soft-spoken three-term congressmember who upended New Jersey’s Democratic boss system, is now the party’s statewide standard-bearer after easily defeating two primary opponents Tuesday.

But in a twist, Kim could be running against the longtime symbol of the very machine he’s trying to dismantle. Incumbent Sen. Bob Menendez — for decades the personification of Democratic boss politics in New Jersey — could be on the ballot against him as an independent and siphon votes from Kim. It’s not yet clear whether Menendez — in the middle of his corruption trial — will stay in the race if he’s convicted, but his current plan to run for reelection injects drama into a general election that would otherwise lack it.

“He’s been in politics long enough to know he’s not going to win this race,” Kim said in an interview. “I’m guessing that a lot of this is just really about his own self preservation right now in court.”

Kim, 41, is still heavily favored to become New Jersey’s next U.S. Senator in a state that hasn’t elected a Republican to the upper house in 52 years. But now he may have to campaign against two opponents this summer and fall: the Republican nominee and Menendez, who could not be reached for comment but said Monday he intends to run on his long record in Congress.

It’s a turn of events few would have seen coming before Menendez’s sprawling indictment in September on charges that include bribery, obstruction of justice and acting as an unregistered foreign agent. But as New Jersey Democrats played the devastating news cautiously, Kim took a chance.

On the day federal prosecutors announced Menendez’s indictment, Kim became the first major Democrat in the state to call on him to resign, beating out the state’s political establishment by hours. The following day, Kim announced his campaign for Senate. It was almost two months before another major Democrat, first lady Tammy Murphy, announced her own candidacy for the seat.

Murphy quickly amassed support from most of the state’s power brokers. With that, she was expected to have the “county line” in the majority of Democratic vote-rich counties. The line has for decades given party-backed candidates a leg up by lining them up in a single column or row with other party-backed candidates, from president to town council, and usually granting them favorable ballot placement.

But Kim sued, arguing the county line was unconstitutional. Murphy, whose boss-driven campaign infuriated much of the Democratic base that rallied around Kim, dropped out. And just days later, a federal judge sided with Kim and eliminated the line for this year’s Democratic primary while the larger case continues in court. (Republicans still have the county line in this year’s primary.)

Kim, who until recently was most famous for being photographed cleaning up debris in the Capitol left over from the January 6 riot, is now a progressive star. And while some of the state’s Democratic chairs are still sore over Kim’s decision to continue his lawsuit against the county line even after Murphy dropped out, he’s their candidate by default.

“We were actually surprised that Andy continued to pursue this [lawsuit] after we all gave him our slogans,” Somerset County Democratic Chair Peg Schaffer said in a phone interview.

In Tuesday’s primary, Kim defeated former labor leader Patricia Campos Medina and social justice activist Lawrence Hamm, who both campaigned against the county line system. The Republican race between Curtis Bashaw and Christine Serrano Glassner was not called by the Associated Press Tuesday night, as Kim’s contest was.

The odds are heavily in Kim’s favor. Besides not having voted for a Republican Senate candidate since 1972, New Jersey hasn’t voted red in a presidential election since 1988. And the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, instead of focusing on flipping Menendez’s seat, have instead sought to hang his legal troubles on more vulnerable Democrats in other states.

But Menendez’s independent candidacy threatens to create an opening for Republicans if the race is closer than expected. Menendez in March said he would seek reelection as an “independent Democrat” if exonerated, but he has not explicitly said he will remove his name from the ballot if he’s convicted. He has until August 16 to decide.

Kim told reporters after he voted in Moorestown Tuesday that Menendez was “putting his own personal benefit ahead of what’s right for the country.”

“Having a sitting senator in the race certainly changes the dynamic,” Kim said. “What is that going to do to the race to have a senator who couldn’t even drop off his ballot petitions yesterday in person because he’s in court? What is that going to do in effecting the mood of the electorate?”

At least one major Democrat, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, has acknowledged the possibility that Menendez, if convicted, could seek to “throw the race into chaos” as a way to get clemency should Donald Trump win the presidential election.

Menendez is deeply unpopular in New Jersey. A Monmouth University poll in March found that 75 percent of New Jerseyans thought he was “probably guilty,” 63 percent felt he should resign immediately and 74 percent disapproved of his job performance. On top of that, independent candidates have no history of success in statewide New Jersey elections. His chances of winning reelection to the seat he’s held since 2006 are virtually nil.

The question Democrats have to grapple with is whether Menendez, should he stay on the ballot, can pull enough Democratic support from Kim to actually threaten his election.

“Any time that we’ve polled on him outside of facing some legal problems as he has in the past, there’s a significant number of people who simply say ‘I don’t know enough about him’ or ‘I don’t pay attention to him’,” said Monmouth University Poll Director Patrick Murray. “Which means there’s not a huge groundswell of underlying support that he can tap into.”

But Menendez has accumulated decades of political relationships, most notably in his urban core home base of Hudson County — one of the state’s most Democratic vote-rich areas.

“What percentage does he need to make this interesting? We don’t know and we won’t know until we get into September and New Jerseyans are paying attention to see where the Democratic and Republican nominees stand at this point,” Murray said. “The likelihood [of Menendez as a spoiler] is low at this point, but things can change in the fall.”

Menendez is quickly burning through campaign cash to pay his lawyers and his fundraising has ground to a halt. Murray said there’s “always the possibility” that a Republican super PAC could play in the election to boost Menendez to hurt Democrats, but “I’m withholding judgment on this whole thing until August 16th.”

Menendez’s longtime Senate colleague Cory Booker — who was one of Menendez’s most loyal colleagues during his 2017 corruption case that ended in a mistrial — didn’t want to speculate about the senior senator becoming the senior spoiler.

“I think speculations about the future are just ill-advised given everything that’s going on right now. We won’t really know until after the trial,” Booker told POLITICO on Tuesday.

Anthony Adragna contributed to this report.