Sue Altman turns on Senator Andy Kim to boost her bid for Congress

There is an old saying about biting the hand that feeds you, but longtime Republican Sue Altman has decided to gnaw it off at the elbow and serve it for dinner.

The former state director for Senator Andy Kim stood on a debate stage Sunday night and did what few political aides dare do while their boss still draws breath in public office.

She declared that the man she has worked for since his election to the Senate is a member of a party that lacks a clear vision forward, and refuses to embrace a fight against corporations and billionaires.

Her own boss’s party. The party that signed her paychecks, until very recently, and the one she wants to reward her with a congressional nomination.

“One of the most jarring aspects of the past 18 months has been watching the fact that Democrats do not have an answer for Project 2025,” Altman told the crowd at Rider University, where she appeared with some of the other candidates hoping to earn a seat in Congress. “They came in, and they ran their play, and we seem to have no comparable vision.”

Let us be clear about what happened here.

Altman was born and raised a Republican, and she got into a row with South Jersey Democratic establishment boss George Norcross while living in Camden County.

That’s one of many places where the Republican rolling stone has called home since leaving a Hunterdon County high school, graduating from New York’s Columbia University and embarking on an international career as a pro basketball player.

Now, as a carpetbagging congressional candidate, fresh off her losing race in the neighboring district, Almost Altman is panning the party that she wants to support her.

Altman did not criticize Republicans. She did not criticize Donald Trump, though plenty of that was available. She criticized Democrats.

She criticized the leadership that Andy Kim has chosen to follow, the caucus he sits in, the strategy he has endorsed as a United States senator.

She did it while asking the voters of New Jersey’s 12th district to send her to Washington to replace the retiring Bonnie Watson Coleman, but she has not presented a platform for change.

If that sounds like a woman throwing her boss under a very large bus, that is because that is precisely what it is.

The bus is idling. The wheels are turning. And Senator Andy Kim is somewhere beneath the chassis, possibly wondering what exactly he did to deserve this from the person he trusted to run his state operations.

The debate featured nine candidates, most of whom took turns bashing the Democratic leadership in Washington. They refused to promise support for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

But now, with another congressional seat in her sights, she has decided that vision is not nearly bold enough.

Altman’s competition called for impeachment of Trump even if the Senate would never convict. They argued over Israel and military aid and who attended which AIPAC conference.

It was the usual primary season spectacle of ambitious people contending they alone have the courage to say what everyone else is too timid to speak.

But Altman’s attack landed differently because of where she came from.

She is not an outsider running against the machine. She was the machine. She worked for Kim. She helped elect him. She presumably believed in his vision or at least pretended to well enough to collect a salary.

We saw none of this indictment against Andy Kim and Hakeem Jeffries while they were funding her campaign in the 7th District about a year and a half ago.

What changed? Not the party. Not the leadership. Not the absence of an answer to Project 2025, which has been a known quantity for more than a year.

What changed is that Altman is no longer a staffer or a candidate who is benefiting from the establishment.

Instead, she’s an opportunistic and ambitious person who developed a remarkable sense of moral clarity precisely when she needs to distinguish herself from a crowded field.

This is not to say she is wrong about the Democrats.

A person could stand in the middle of the Potomac and declare the river wet and still be correct.

The Democratic Party has indeed failed to articulate a compelling countervision to the organized authoritarian playbook of the other side. They have offered resistance as performance art, outrage as fundraising appeal, and the faint hope that the courts will save them from the consequences of their own timidity.

Any honest observer would admit that.

But honesty is not the issue here. Loyalty is. Altman served Andy Kim. She worked to advance his career, his agenda, his standing.

Now she has used her platform as a candidate to tell the world that the man she served is part of a party without a clue.

There is no gentle way to interpret that. It is a betrayal dressed up as principle.

Senator Kim has not yet responded to Altman’s remarks. Perhaps he is too busy trying to figure out how a person who handled his correspondence and managed his political operation can suddenly claim that he and his colleagues lack a clearer vision. Perhaps he is simply waiting for the bus to finish its work.

The other candidates on that stage understood the assignment.

Adam Hamawy called Democratic leadership a failure, but he is not coming off their payroll. Sam Wang said he would not be favorable toward Jeffries. Shanel Robinson promised not to support the leader at all.

They are all running for the same open seat, and they all need to prove they are more progressive, more defiant, more authentically angry than the next person. That is how primaries work. You sharpen the knives and you cut.

But Altman’s knife came from Senator Kim’s own drawer.

That is the part that ought to sting. She did not just criticize the party. She criticized her boss by implication, her mentor, her ticket to relevance in New Jersey politics. And she did it in public, on a debate stage, with reporters taking notes.

Whether she wins or loses this primary, the message has been sent.

Loyalty in politics expires faster than milk on a summer porch. The same person who smiled next to you at campaign rallies will smile next to your replacement when the calendar turns.

This is starting to look like a two-way battle between Hamawy and Assemblywoman Verlina Reynolds-Jackson, so Altman’s betrayal might not be significant.

Sue Altman says she wants to fight corporations and billionaires. That is a fine ambition, but not one we can trust given her track record.

But the first person she steamrolled on her way to that fight was the man who gave her a job when she needed one. 

Regardless of the merits of her argument or the relevance of her candidacy, that is a hell of a way to thank Senator Andy Kim.