New Jersey state Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr. (R) will reportedly announce his candidacy for U.S. Congress next week, seeking his party’s nomination to challenge first-term Rep. Tom Malinowski (D) in the state’s 7th Congressional District.
“I have concerns about the direction of our Congress. New Jersey deserves strong leadership and I’m exploring a run for Congress,” he told The New Jersey Globe last month.
Throughout Kean’s political career, however, “strong leadership” has often translated into fierce opposition to legal rights for LGBTQ people and immigrants.
After unsuccessfully seeking a Republican congressional nomination in 2000 and a brief tenure in the state’s general assembly, Kean was appointed to the New Jersey Senate in 2003 and was selected by his peers to serve as state Senate minority leader in 2008. During that period of time, he mounted an unsuccessful U.S. Senate run in 2006 against Democrat Robert Menendez.
His anti-LGBTQ views have been a hallmark of his tenure, as he’s fought against marriage equality as well as even smaller protections for same-sex families.
In 2004, Kean was one of just nine senators to oppose a bipartisan domestic partnership bill to grant a handful of legal protections to New Jersey’s same-sex couples. His reasoning at the time was that it might cost too much money to give them even some of the benefits that opposite-sex couples already received.
Two years later, Steven Goldstein, then-executive director of Garden State Equality, told The New York Times that Kean had initially pledged to support the bill, but changed his mind in the early hours before the vote, fearing a conservative backlash in future primary campaigns. “Dealing with Tom Kean Jr. is like playing chess with Casper the Friendly Ghost,” Goldstein said.
When the state supreme court ruled in 2006 that same-sex families were entitled to equal legal rights and responsibilities — a decision that initially allowed for civil unions in the state and in 2013 brought marriage equality — Kean strongly objected. “I still believe that marriage is and should be between one man and one woman and I would support an amendment to the state constitution reaffirming that definition,” he responded. He attacked his opponent in that year’s campaign for being too pro-LGBTQ.
A spokesperson explained, “Tom unequivocally believes marriage is between a man and a woman. Tom believes it should remain that way. He supports preserving the traditional definition of marriage. And that’s the main difference between him and Bob Menendez.”
By 2012, several additional states had adopted marriage equality and polls for the first time indicated majority support for the idea. But Kean was unswayed. As the legislature sent a bill to bring marriage equality to the New Jersey, Kean voted no, encouraged colleagues to sustain then Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) veto in 2013, and demanded a statewide plebiscite on the rights of same-sex families. Although putting LGBTQ civil rights up for a vote was psychologically damaging experience for the community, he slammed legislative Democrats for not going that route, saying it was “exhibiting a complete lack of faith in the people.”
As of April 2019, Kean’s official state Senate website still includes a statement complaining that other states let their voters decide the marriage issue and New Jersey should too.
Kean to Sweeney: Other States Allow Voters to Decide on Same Sex Marriage, Pump Their Own Gas; Should NJ? http://t.co/IftBkjsk
— Senator Tom Kean (@tomkean) December 27, 2012
Kean also fiercely opposed a vital effort to protect LGBTQ and other New Jersey residents from HIV/AIDS by voting against and then suing to block a needle exchange program. Virtually every other state offered access to clean needles, but Kean did everything in his power to obstruct it in New Jersey.
“I oppose needle-exchange programs,” he said in 2006, saying such a system “circumvents law enforcement activities and aids what is an illegal activity.”
In addition to fighting against the LGBTQ community, Kean has also taken a stridently anti-immigrant stance even in a diverse and progressive state like New Jersey. A screengrab of his 2006 campaign blog by the Internet Archive WayBack Machine reveals his vitriolic rhetoric.
“My opponent Bob Menendez is wrong on immigration,” he wrote on May 25 of that year. “In the past month, Menendez has flip flopped on border security, voted in favor of a massive guest worker program, voted in favor of allowing illegal aliens to collect social security, voted against English as the national language, and voted against requiring photo identification at the polls. At every step of this debate Menendez has been way out of the mainstream, and he’ll have a tough time explaining these votes to the people of New Jersey.”
In a May 17 transcript from a speech at Liberty State Park, Kean also condemned bipartisan immigration reform efforts. “I do not support a blanket amnesty policy for our country,” he said. “I believe it would dishonor legal immigrants who came here the right way, and it would only encourage more illegal migration. My opponent in this year’s election, Bob Menendez, believes the Senate’s plan is not amnesty. I disagree. Rewarding those who broke our laws with a clear path to citizenship is amnesty.”
Shortly after President Donald Trump took office in 2017 and took executive action aimed at excluding Muslims from entering the United States, the New Jersey Senate passed a resolution condemning the actions. Kean opposed this effort, instead condemning their condemnation and suggesting that anti-immigrant and Islamophobic policies do not matter to his constituents.
“I think that some of the arguments have ignored the reality that many prior presidential administrations of both parties have taken similar immigration actions to those recently recommended,” Kean said at the time. “Let’s focus on the solutions that are important to the people of the state of New Jersey today and going forward and we can come together as a citizen and as a people.”
Kean did not respond to a request for comment on whether he disavows any or all of these previous positions.