In a spectacle that would make even the most cynical observer of American politics wince, the Honorable Tom Kean Jr. has unveiled his latest strategic masterpiece—a “Women for Kean” coalition, as if the mere presence of skirts in his corner might somehow shield him from the glaring facts of his own pathetic record.
The event, held at the Olde Mill Inn in Basking Ridge, was less a political rally and more a theatrical performance of a man who has spent four months lurking in the shadows, his whereabouts as mysterious as the Loch Ness Monster, only to emerge with a desperate plea for women to save his floundering career.
Let us examine this curious spectacle.
There stood Kean, the Republican nepo baby who inherited his name and little else, surrounded by a bevy of Republican women from six counties, all assembled to convince the good people of New Jersey’s 7th district that this man—this man who was so conspicuously absent for four months that even his own staff couldn’t locate him with a bloodhound—is somehow their champion.
Four months, ladies and gentlemen. Four months of silence while his constituents wondered if their congressman had fallen off the face of the earth, only to learn that he was “hospitalized” after what insiders delicately termed a nervous breakdown.
A nervous breakdown. For a man whose job involves sitting in a chair and voting to make life harder for the very people who elected him.
But let us not dwell on the psychological fragility of a man who crumples under the modest pressures of representing a swing district.
No, let us instead turn to the curious mathematics of his voting record. This same man, this paragon of manhood who now seeks the protective embrace of women’s skirts, voted to strip tens of thousands of Americans from Medicaid and Food Stamps.
He voted to kill them, plain and simple. Not with a gun, not with a sword, but with the cold, bureaucratic efficiency of a man who has never had to wonder where his next meal might come from.
He cast his vote to remove the safety net from beneath families already dangling over the abyss, and now he wants these same families’ mothers and grandmothers to rally to his cause. It would be laughable if it weren’t so monstrous.
The coalition’s inaugural reception was a veritable who’s who of Republican women, including the congressman’s own wife, Rhonda, a former EPA official during the Bush administration.
One can only imagine the conversations at the dinner table in the Kean household.
“Darling, I voted to slash food assistance for children today. Would you please assemble a group of women to pretend I’m not a complete scoundrel?”
And so she did, because that’s what overprivileged families do in the world of political nepotism—they circle the wagons while the congressman’s poll numbers circle the drain.
The organization’s co-chairs include a veritable alphabet soup of Republican women—former mayors, councilwomen, school board members—all eager to lend their reputations to a man whose own reputation was last seen fleeing the scene of his own cowardice.
They speak of “galvanizing energy” and “fighting for what matters most,” but what matters most to Tom Kean Jr. is that he keep his job, a job he has demonstrated neither the fortitude nor the conviction to perform with any distinction.
He is, by all accounts, the most vulnerable Republican incumbent in the nation, a distinction he has earned through sheer incompetence and a remarkable talent for disappearing when the heat gets too intense.
He’s trying to hide–ducking debates and threatening to arrest reporters who show up at his fundraising events– but Democrats sense blood in the water.
His opponent, Rebecca Bennett, a former Texas Republican and retired Navy helicopter pilot, must be watching this spectacle with a mixture of amusement and disgust.
While Kean was hiding from his responsibilities, Bennett was flying helicopters.
While Kean was voting to deny food to children, Bennett was serving her country.
While Kean was suffering his conveniently timed nervous breakdown, Bennett was preparing to send him into an even more devastating tailspin—the one that will occur on Election Day.
The irony of the situation is so thick you could cut it with a butter knife. Here is a man who has done nothing for women—indeed, has actively worked against them by voting to strip them of healthcare and food assistance—and yet he stands before them, hat in hand, begging for their endorsement.
Publicly, Kean expressed support for gay rights and abortion, but he voted to outlaw medical care required by the LGBT community and women.
Kean repeatedly voted against LGBTQ rights—opposing marriage equality, domestic partnership benefits, and court rulings on same-sex unions, while also voting to elect anti-LGBTQ figures Jim Jordan and Mike Johnson to House leadership.
It is as if a fox were to form a “Chickens for Fox” coalition and expect the poultry to flock to his side.
The women of New Jersey’s 7th district are not stupid. They know that a man who cannot be found for four months, who can’t even manage the basic responsibilities of his office without a nervous breakdown, is hardly the champion they deserve.
They know that a man who votes to remove food from the tables of their neighbors is not their ally.
The Republican National Committee Co-Chair KC Crosbie framed the race around national priorities—immigration, taxes, election laws—as if these abstractions might distract from the concrete reality that Tom Kean Jr. voted to kill Americans. She speaks of “results, not theatrics,” but what results has Kean produced? Four months of absence. A voting record that would make Ebenezer Scrooge blush. A desperate coalition formed as a life raft for a drowning career.
And so we are left with the spectacle of a man who has been given everything—a famous name, a safe seat, every advantage the Republican establishment could bestow—and has squandered it all through his own timidity and callousness. He now stands before the women of his district, hoping they will see something other than what is plainly before them: a coward hiding behind petticoats, a nepo baby clutching his family name like a security blanket, a man who would vote to starve his own constituents and then ask for their support.
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The voters of New Jersey’s 7th district will have their say in November, and if there is any justice in this world, Tom Kean Jr. will finally discover what it means to be truly and permanently AWOL.
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