The members of New Jersey Organizing Project, a People’s Action member organization, has overwhelmingly voted to endorse U.S. Congressman Andy Kim in his bid to become a U.S. Senator this November, after hosting a Town Hall with Kim on June 27.
Kim, who represents New Jersey’s Third Congressional District, has a long and fruitful relationship with NJOP, which has advocated for disaster relief reforms and expanded access to health care since it was founded in 2014 to help communities impacted by Hurricane Sandy, which damaged more than 346,000 homes along the Jersey Shore.
“We played a role in getting Congressman Kim to where he is today – and since then, he’s stayed with us,” NJOP said in a statement announcing the endorsement. “Our new Senator can’t be someone who puts profits over people’s lives, and who only listens to corporations and donors with lots of money and fancy titles. We want a representative who will listen to us and work to govern alongside us.”
After engaging in a lively conversation with Kim around NJOP’s priorities, which include flood insurance reform, improving disaster recovery and expanded support for those impacted by the overdose crisis, 92 percent of those who attended NJOP’s Town Hall voted to endorse Kim to become New Jersey’s Junior Senator.
Kim has long engaged with NJOP members, regularly meeting in the district as well as in Washington, D.C., where he has successfully championed many of NJOP’s legislative priorities, including the Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment (MAT) Act and the Reforming Disaster Recovery Act.
“The more we can recreate what NJOP has been able to do in different parts of the country, the better,” Kim said at the Town Hall. “You’re looking out for others, but you also need to make sure there are people who are looking out for you, and I want to be one of them.”
Kim attended the group’s first convention in 2018, where he joined a panel on healthcare and the opioid crisis. Since then, he has regularly attended NJOP’s events to support survivors of both Sandy and Hurricane Ida, and roundtable discussions on health care.
Kim was first elected to represent New Jersey’s Third District in 2018, and garnered nationwide attention when, in the early hours of January 7, 2021, an AP photographer took photos of him helping ATF officers clean up the floor of the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, after it was breached by rioters seeking to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election.
The blue suit Kim wore in those photos now hangs in the Smithsonian Institution.
“Jan6 must never happen again,” Kim wrote on Twitter when he donated the suit. “While some try to erase history, I will fight to tell the story so it never happens again.”
