Rep. Andy Kim, a lawmaker who has shaken up New Jersey politics since entering the race to unseat Sen. Robert Menendez, won the Democratic Senate nomination Tuesday after a watershed campaign. decision on access to the ballot.
THE victory makes Mr. Kim, 41, a favorite to become New Jersey’s next senator. He would be the first Korean American to be elected to the United States Senate.
“I took the opportunity to run for the Senate eight months ago, convinced that people are fed up with our broken politics and are ready to welcome a new generation of leaders,” Mr. Kim said in a statement. . “What I discovered is that there is a deep hunger across the political spectrum for a different kind of politics that is grounded in integrity and public service and aimed at rebuilding trust. »
The results, announced by The Associated Press minutes after polls closed, cap a tumultuous campaign that began a day after Mr. Menendez, a Democrat, was accused in September of being at the center of a vast scheme of international corruption. Mr. Menendez, a third-term senator who for decades astutely steered New Jersey’s notoriously difficult politics, did not compete for the Democratic nomination.
For months, Mr. Kim’s main opponent was Tammy Murphy, the wife of Governor Philip D. Murphy. Ms. Murphy, a first-time candidate, was bombarded with accusations of nepotism and dropped out of the race in March after failing to communicate with voters.
Mr. Kim, a former member of the National Security Council who advised President Barack Obama on Iraq, was first elected to Congress in 2018 – one of four democrats that year to move a New Jersey district from red to blue after Donald J. Trump was elected president.
His victory Tuesday came as Mr. Menendez was in his fourth week of a federal trial in Manhattan, defending himself against some of the most serious charges ever brought against a sitting member of Congress.
Mr. Menendez, 70, refused to resign and took steps Monday to have his name printed on a ballot at least once more in submission of candidacy for re-election in November as an independent.
Voters said Tuesday they were skeptical of his political future.
“He’s screwed — he’s not going to win anything,” said June Ackermann, 67, a nurse from Freehold, New Jersey. She said she voted before Tuesday, during the early voting period, in part because politics had “gone crazy.”
Mr. Kim’s victory came as ballots were also cast for the presidential primary election and for 11 of the state’s 12 congressional seats. (A special election will take place in September for the House seat formerly held by Rep. Donald M. Payne Jr. of Newark, who died in April.)
Many elections were directly affected by Sen. Menendez’s legal troubles, as well as a court ruling that changed the rules governing how Democratic candidates would be placed on the state’s primary ballots.
The senator’s criminal case has thrust his son, Rep. Rob Menendez, 38, into a sudden and competitive race for re-election. But the younger Menendez managed to hold on, winning a Democratic primary against Ravi Bhalla, the mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey.
Mr. Bhalla had cast Mr. Menendez as part of the same broken machine politics that his father came to embody. But Mr. Menendez’s voters seemed willing to draw a distinction between father and son. With more than half the votes counted, he was ahead of Mr. Bhalla by a margin of 54 to 35 percent.
In the Senate race, Mr. Kim’s margin of victory was decisive. With 54 percent of the vote counted, he received nearly 77 percent of the vote, according to the AP. He defeated two left-wing Democrats, Patricia Campos-Medina and Larry Hamm.
Curtis Bashaw, a hotel developer from Cape May, New Jersey, won the Republican primary. With 46 percent of the votes counted, Mr. Bashaw received 55 percent of the vote. Her closest competitor, Christine Serrano Glassner, mayor of Mendham Borough, New Jersey, held 30 percent.
Mr. Bashaw, 64, is a political moderate who has expressed support for Mr. Trump, who continues to wield influence over New Jersey’s left-leaning Republican base. He faces a tough race against Mr. Kim in November.
It’s been 52 years since New Jersey voters elected a Republican senator; Democrats detain 930,000 people registration advantageand Mr. Trump lost to President Biden in New Jersey by 16 percentage points in 2020.
Senator Menendez’s entry into the November race as an independent, however, has the potential to offer a boost to Republicans by fracturing the Democratic vote. Mike Berg, a spokesman for the Republican national campaign, said Monday that the party was “watching New Jersey closely.”
The senator’s reasons for running may have little to do with his re-election. By staying in the race, Mr. Menendez can continue to collect campaign contributions to supplement the $3.5 million he had last month. He has already spent more than $3 million on his current team of lawyers, and the trial is expected to last at least four more weeks.
The senator also uses his campaign account to pay his wife’s lawyers, Nadine Mendezwho is also accused of bribery conspiracy and is expected to go to trial this summer.
Mr. Kim’s decision to run for Senate meant that, win or lose, he would have to vacate his House seat in a South Jersey district redrawn after the 2020 census to favor the democrats.
Two prominent Democratic candidates quickly emerged, both members of the state Assembly: Carol Murphy, 61; and Herb Conaway, also 61 years old.
Mr. Conaway, a physician who also had a law degree and was first elected in 1997, was endorsed by several county Democratic organizations. In years past, this would have earned him a prominent place on the ballot, known as “the county line”, and that would most likely have been enough to propel him to Congress.
But one legal challenge Mr. Kim’s candidacy in February fundamentally reshaped electoral politics in New Jersey, and the race to replace him will likely offer the first clear test of the new rules.
Siding with Mr. Kim, a judge ordered Democrats to stop grouping all candidates backed by the county’s political party onto a single line on the ballot and present the names of candidates running for each office together.
That’s how it’s done in every other state, but the change is expected to be a wild card in several close elections Tuesday in New Jersey, including Rep. Menendez’s.
Rep. Menendez was elected to a first term in 2022. He had never held office before, but was able to clear the field thanks to his father’s connections – even before announcing his candidacy.
This election, the political landscape was very different. After Senator Menendez’s indictment last year, Mr. Bhalla, the first Sikh to lead a New Jersey city, entered the House race. He has highlighted Rep. Menendez’s ties to his father and outpaced the congressman in fundraising.
Rep. Menendez won the support of the state’s top Democrats, including the governor, who brought with him a well-oiled, get-out-the-vote party apparatus.
Mr. Bhalla, 50, filed a legal brief in support of Mr. Kim’s lawsuit seeking to end the county line. And the changed ballot design is expected to play a role in the race for the Eighth Congressional District.
“It makes both candidates work harder,” Mr. Bhalla, a civil rights lawyer, said last month at a forum in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Elise Young reports contributed.
