By James J. Devine
I recently received a political mailer from the Congressional Leadership Fund, the dark money super PAC endorsed by House Speaker Mike Johnson, that accused Sue Altman of scheming to raise taxes.
Then I got another mailing from the same group that falsely claimed a woman who never held office or voted to raise taxes was synonymous with tax hikes but let’s pause for a moment and take a closer look at Tom Kean Jr., a candidate who comes from a long line of tax-loving Republicans.
The Congressional Leadership Fund spent more than $4.6 million to help Tom Kean Jr. buy the election in 2022, and it raised almost one billion dollars since the Supreme Court’s infamous Citizens United decision opened the floodgates to this kind of dirty money.
If we’re talking about taxes, the Kean family is practically royalty when it comes to imposing tax hikes and low wages on the American public.
Tom Kean Jr.’s political lineage runs deep, starting with his great-great-great-grandfather, Peter Stuyvesant, who governed the colony of New Netherland in the 17th century.
Stuyvesant imposed a tax of one beaver skin—or its equivalent in trade—on every household to finance equipment he had imported from Holland.
In the colonial era, the Kean family was finding creative ways to extract resources from the people but fast forward to the 20th century, and the Kean family continued its legacy of raising taxes.
Tom Kean Jr.’s grandfather, Robert Winthrop Kean, served New Jersey in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1939 to 1959, where he earned a reputation as an expert in taxation.
His ultimate accomplishment? Helping shepherd through the largest tax increase in U.S. history!
Under Grandpop’s guidance, the top marginal income tax rate for individuals soared to 88%, and corporate taxes also increased, along with excise taxes and more. By the time Kean’s grandfather left Washington, some Americans were paying a staggering top tax rate of 91%!
The Kean dynasty’s appetite for taxation didn’t end there.
Tom’s father, Governor Thomas Kean, also had a love affair with tax hikes during his time in office.
In 1982, Governor Kean proposed an increase in the gasoline tax, from 8 to 10 cents per gallon, and ultimately raised the state sales tax from 5 to 6 percent.
By the end of his first year in office, Kean had raised at least 17 taxes and fees.
When Kean Sr. faced a budget shortfall later in his term, what was his solution? More taxes. In November 1982, he pushed for another gasoline tax increase to address a $150 million deficit. When that effort failed, he doubled down on tax hikes, raising the top income tax rate from 2.5% to 3.5% and increasing the sales tax to 7%.
All told, Governor Kean presided over a cascade of tax increases that left New Jersey taxpayers digging deeper into their wallets but his crowning achievement was the New Jersey Transportation Trust Fund, which provided the opportunity for politicians to divert dedicated funding for road, bridge, and other transportation maintenance projects to Wall Street in the form of interest payments.
Thanks to Governor Kean, New Jersey taxpayers currently owe $32.1 billion to bond investors!
And now, Tom Kean Jr., heir to this tax-loving dynasty, is being presented to voters as some kind of fiscally conservative champion but in the New Jersey Legislature, he proved more than capable of soaking taxpayers many times.
Let’s not be fooled by the dark money rhetoric.
His grandfather helped pass the Revenue Acts of 1942, 1943, 1950, 1951, and 1954—all of which increased taxes on both individuals and corporations, solidifying the family’s place as one of the most pro-tax lineages in American political history.
Even Tom Kean Jr.’s great-grandfather, Hamilton Fish Kean, who served as a U.S. senator, was no stranger to aristocratic tax policies. Married into the wealthy Winthrop family—descendants of John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony—Hamilton Fish Kean was connected to a political class that, since colonial times, had no qualms about imposing taxes to finance their government endeavors.
Kean is also descended from William Livingston, who was the first governor of New Jersey.
So, while the Congressional Leadership Fund tries to paint Democrat Sue Altman as a tax schemer, let’s remember that she has never imposed a tax on anyone while the Kean family has been hiking taxes for generations.
Whether it’s beaver skins in the 1600s, gasoline and income taxes in the 20th century, or the giant 21st-century shift that took the burden of funding government off the rich and placed it firmly on the backs of working-class Americans, the Kean political dynasty has always found a way to put their hands in the taxpayers’ pockets.
In a world where political mailers play fast and loose with facts, it’s important to remember that Tom Kean Jr. comes from a long line of aristocrats who perfected the art of being career politicians who love raising taxes—and that’s the real story to which New Jersey voters should be paying attention.