New Jersey Democratic Rep. Andy Kim announced Saturday that he’ll run next year against Sen. Bob Menendez in the wake of the senator’s indictment and refusal to step down.
“After calls to resign, Senator Menendez said ‘I am not going anywhere.’ As a result, I feel compelled to run against him. Not something I expected to do, but NJ deserves better. We cannot jeopardize the Senate or compromise our integrity,” Kim posted on X, the platform previously known as Twitter.
Kim has been representing New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District, which includes suburbs east of Trenton, since 2019. He won reelection last November by more than 10 percentage points.
This is Andy Kim. Earlier on this day, he had gone to the Capitol to do his job before a crowd of over 2,000 deranged people broke into the building, determined to do violence, and he took shelter with his co-workers. Once the situation was under control, Andy Kim returned to his duty: to certify New Jersey votes for Joe Biden.
The session ran late that night and Kim was exhausted when he was walking through the Rotunda to head home - but he was stopped by all the trash and debris the insurrectionists had left behind. He couldn’t leave it that way. He found some trash bags and spent a couple hours on his knees, cleaning up what had been left behind. When he finished, he quietly went home, and returned to work the next day.
These are the type of people we should have representing us.
You can tell he’s a progressive because he was actually interested in cleaning up a mess republicans made.
I’ll be honest, if it was me that day, I’d probably have been so fried after the long day and fearing for my life that I’d have gone home and let someone else do the cleaning. But no. He put his exhaustion aside and put some effort into cleaning things up. We need more people like Andy Kim in Congress.
So, Andy Kim is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
We already know the Democratic Party will use incumbency as an excuse to prop up an anti-choice candidate if they are challenged by a progressive. Let’s see if it’s used as an excuse to prop up an openly corrupt candidate as well.
Why do we already know that? The democrats, unlike Republicans, generally crack down on stuff like this pretty quickly. I mean look at Gov Cuomo or Al Franken.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he steps down in the coming weeks
Given that Menendez has been here before and didn’t step down, what do you think is different this time?
We already know the Democratic Party will use incumbency as an excuse to prop up an anti-choice candidate if they are challenged by a progressive.
Why do we already know that?
Henry Cuellar is how we know.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
New Jersey Democratic Rep. Andy Kim announced Saturday that he’ll run next year against Sen. Bob Menendez in the wake of the senator’s indictment and refusal to step down.
Kim made headlines following the January 6, 2021, insurrection after he was photographed cleaning up the debris and trash left at the Capitol by the rioters who ransacked the building hours prior.
Menendez was first appointed to the US Senate in 2006 to fill the vacancy left by Jon Corzine, who had been elected New Jersey governor.
The indictment alleged that the couple accepted bribes, which included gold, cash and home mortgage payments, in exchange for the senator’s influence.
Democrats in Menendez’s chamber have been slow to comment on the indictment, including junior New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker.
In 2015, Menendez was charged with conspiracy, bribery and honest services fraud relating to allegedly abusing the power of his office.
The original article contains 528 words, the summary contains 148 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Smh. One bad apple spoils the barrel.
Upvote for correct usage of the term. Democrats at least have a basically decent track record on this. Often going too far to preemptively even eliminate the appearance of impropriety in some cases. Republicans on the other hand. The barrel full rotted away 50-100 years ago. And the barrel itself has decomposed. Leaving the rotting ooze to go everywhere and get on everything.
Thanks. You’re accusing only the other side of being drunker than Cooter Brown on rot gut brandy.? To my mind, most of the rest are just better at “handling” (hiding) the intoxication of bling and bam (money and power). With apologies to a washed-up hip-hop artist, “…you can’t change the system from within, because the system changes you.”
Are there exceptions? Perhaps to some degree, but even that seems optimistic, some days.
