TRENTON — Democratic U.S. Rep.
Andy Kim was elected Tuesday to the U.S. Senate, defeating Republican businessman Curtis Bashaw for the seat that opened when Bob Menendez resigned this year after his federal conviction on bribery charges.
Kim, a three-term congressman from central New Jersey, becomes the first Korean-American in the Senate. In a recent interview, he said that accomplishment would validate his parents’ decision 50 years ago to immigrate to the United States. He was the state’s first Asian-American to be elected to Congress when he defeated a Republican incumbent in 2018.
A former Obama administration national security aide, Kim was a Rhodes Scholar and has a Ph.D. from Oxford.
He’s presented himself as an unassuming, hard-working official and gained national attention in 2021 when he was spotted cleaning up the U.S. Capitol after the Jan.
6 insurrection, bagging trash. “It pains me to my core to see the struggle we are going through,” Kim told supporters in a hotel ballroom following his victory. “The very foundation of our democracy is rendered fragile.
We are at a moment of profound anxiety about what comes next for our country.” Kim challenged people to see the upcoming 250th anniversary of America’s independence as “a reminder that the greatness of America is not what we take from this country but what we give back.” “Let us use that extraordinary milestone as a moment of healing,” he said.
Kim’s victory keeps a reliably Democrat.