Growing up, U.S. Rep. Andy Kim’s family did not talk about politics around the dining room table, but they did talk a lot about public service.
Learning to serve his community and the fact that he is now a father are two reasons the 42-year-old Democratic representative of New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District is running for the U.S. Senate. His Republican challenger is businessman Curtis Bashaw, 64, a gay, pro-choice fiscal conservative and social moderate.
The Democrats hold a slim majority in the Senate, and if Kim loses to Bashaw, it would likely flip that majority in favor of the GOP. New Jersey hasn’t sent a Republican to the U.S. Senate since 1972.
Family and background
“I’m the son of South Korean immigrants. My parents immigrated to America 50 years ago,” Kim said.
He grew up in South Jersey and now lives in Moorestown with his wife, Kammy Lai, and their two sons, a seven-year-old second-grader and an eight-year-old fourth-grader.
“I’ve the great honor to be able to represent in Congress the community where I did my K-through-12 public school education,” he said.
“I very much believe it’s the fact that I’m a dad is why I’m trying to do this type of work. I really do think that we live in a very pivotal moment in this country. The next couple years are going to shape the next couple decades.”
Kim believes his upbringing in New Jersey and his public school education transformed his life and gave him the opportunities he has today. “I want that to be there for my kids and my kids’ generation,” he said.
Kim is a Rhodes scholar and has worked under both Democrats and Republicans in his political career. He has served as a diplomat and has worked for the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House National Security Council.
On why he’s a Democrat
“I’m somebody that did not come from a political family. My parents are immigrants to this country. We never talked politics at the dining room table, but we did talk a lot about public service and about serving the community, so I very much come initially from that sense of public service.”
“I’ve shown that I can build bridges, and ultimately what I think that those people in America feel is that they’re frustrated with just the hyper-partisanship that’s out there.”
Kim said he is not someone who ever thought he’d run for public office and that holding office, in some ways, is still new to him. “I’m a Democrat because I believe in a lot of the priorities that the Democratic Party is pushing on, like gun-violence prevention, like supporting the middle class, and to try to address and fight against this growing inequality in our nation, try to work to get everyone in this country the kind of healthcare that they deserve, to try to push for fairness.”
Kim believes the Democratic Party is the one that best aligns with what he’s trying to engage in. “But what I will say is that I still will always see myself as a public servant first,” he said. He thinks that mindset is why he was able to win a congressional district that former President Donald Trump carried.
“I’ve shown that I can build bridges, and ultimately what I think that those people in America feel is that they’re frustrated with just the hyper-partisanship that’s out there, and they want to see a different kind of governance, and that’s one that I hope to bring about.”
On restoring integrity to the U.S. Senate
Kim sees a lot of challenges ahead when it comes to fixing “our broken politics.”
“As someone who’s been in Congress for the last six years, I’ve seen it up close and personal, the things we need to fix,” he said. There’s no doubt, Kim believes, changes are needed in campaign financing, in gerrymandering in the House of Representatives, and fixing the “brokenness” of the filibuster on the Senate side and “how that’s been weaponized to be able to prevent a lot of legislative progress we need to debate.”
“These are huge problems,” he said. “We live in the time of the greatest amount of distrust in government in modern American history. We need to be able to restore that sense of trust and that sense of integrity.”
issues facing the LGBTQ community have become weaponized and used for political purposes.
On why the LGBTQ community should support him
Kim believes he and his party can best deliver on the policies and needs of the LGBTQ community.
“I’ll tell you right now, when I talk to members of the LGBTQ community, there’s so much fear, there’s so much anxiety.” He said issues facing the LGBTQ community have become weaponized and used for political purposes. “And particularly from the Republican Party, that has just really demonized and used this as one of the biggest wedges in our country right now. We need to move away from that. The Republican Party is clearly trying to really take away rights and protections from the LGBTQ community, so that’s something that I will fight against.”
Kim noted that he voted for the Equality Act to make sure sexual orientation and gender identity are enshrined as part of what falls under civil rights protections. “I think that’s really where it comes down to. This is the new civil rights challenge of this generation. And we really need to make sure that we have people in office that support that, but also that we have the Democratic Party to lead that effort because it’s the Republican Party that’s been fighting against that every single step of the way.”
Kim pointed out that where this race will fall in a divided Senate will determine who is going to lead that effort for LGBTQ people.
“I hope people see that we don’t need leaders like (Sen.) Mitch McConnell (R-KY) continuing to hold sway. They stood in the way of the Equality Act and so many other things that are being formed for promoting the protections and freedoms of the LGBTQ community, so that’s what I hope voters in New Jersey will see when it comes to my candidacy.”
“the Republican Party has been trying to use issues like notification to “weaponize this and prevent people from being themselves.”
On transgender rights
Kim believes that the issue of transgender rights is perhaps one of the most heartbreaking ones he’s heard.
“I remember having a conversation with a trans youth in Red Bank talking about just how much they fear for what’s potentially going to happen in November,” he said. He related that this person is considering leaving the country if Trump is elected. The person is also thinking of getting some medical procedures now because those procedures may be banned later on, Kim said.
“It’s particularly scary right now, and it really breaks my heart, and so yes I’m very much for their protections making sure that they can lead their best lives, and we can protect the trans community, in particular trans youth who are really at the heart of this.”
There has been legislation in many parts of the country that would require schools to inform parents that a child is transgender. LGBTQ advocates are opposed to that policy. They believe it amounts to schools outing a child against their will, and that might be dangerous with unsupportive parents at home.
Kim said he sees how the Republican Party has been trying to use issues like notification to “weaponize this and prevent people from being themselves.” He said this amounts to the government inserting itself into the middle of very personal decisions at the individual level and at the family level. “I think that that’s wrong,” he said.
On Project 2025
Kim said that Project 2025 is an agenda that “says the quiet part out loud.”
“It really shows what dangers we face as a country if Donald Trump is elected and if the Republicans take control of the Senate majority, and I think it shows a very stark difference between me and my competitor and the political parties that we represent.”
Project 2025 is a plan devised in part by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation to overhaul the federal government. Kim called it “a really extremist agenda that would completely upturn our federal government.”
He said Project 2025 would give the president “enormous” powers in terms of shaping the government for political purposes. He continued that the plan would take away reproductive rights from women all across the country and would negatively impact in vitro fertilization, or IVF. “I worry about that a lot,” he said. The plan “also talks about upending all the progress that we’ve made when it comes to climate change, when it comes to trying to address the extreme weather, and the challenges that are going to affect my kids’ generation.
“I see this as a significant problem, and I hope that voters really see that this is not just about who sits in the Oval Office but what direction our country is going to go in, so it very much worries me when I see what’s written in Project 2025. I see that (former) President Trump, Curtis Bashaw, Republicans across the board would be pushing a lot of these types of ideas and proposals.”
Kim believes he’s more in touch with everyday New Jerseyans than his competitor.
A politician versus a businessman
Kim works in politics and the public sector; Bashaw is a businessman and entrepreneur who owns several hotels. While Bashaw believes his business experience would be advantageous to him in office, Kim believes he’s more in touch with everyday New Jerseyans than his competitor.
“When I go around the state and talk to people, what they want is someone who can understand what families are going through,” Kim said. “I’m the son of immigrants. I’m a public school kid. I don’t come from a well-off, well-connected family, so I come from a different background than Mr. Bashaw.”
Kim said he’s never had anything given to him, he’s worked for everything he has, and New Jerseyans connect with that. People want to see someone who can show he’s succeeded and got there on their own, he said.
“I think that right now more than ever people are struggling with high costs; they’re worried about paying [the bills]. We don’t need more multimillionaires in the U.S. Senate. We don’t need people who are funding their campaigns with millions of dollars from their own bank account. That’s just not in touch with what the people of New Jersey are dealing with. We don’t need more multimillionaires in the Senate that are going to give tax cuts to themselves and their rich friends.”
And as a public servant who’s served the country, Kim said, “I think that we’ve seen voters can connect and recognize that I can understand a lot of their challenges and difficulties that they have.”
