Never taking his foot off the gas, Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) scored another whirlwind fundraising cycle, raising a hefty $751,000 in the fourth quarter of 2021 and starting out his election year with massive $3.3 million cash-on-hand.
Kim finished last year with 50% more than his $2.2 million warchest at the end of 2019. He’s raised more than $3.4 million since winning his second term in 2020. The former Obama White House staffer, the Gottheimer of the South, has raised more than $16 million since becoming a candidate for Congress in 2017. Kim does not accept corporate PAC contributions.
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His likely opponent, Viking Yacht Company owner Robert Healey, Jr., said he has raised more than $507,000 since entering the race last November and has banked $469,000.
As a congressional candidate, Kim has faced a trio of Republican self-funders: incumbent Tom MacArthur (R-Toms River) in 2018, former Hill International CEO David Richter in 2020, and now, seemingly, Healey.
Kim will seek a third term in a district that was redrawn to become more Democratic than the one he’s won twice – he was one of seven House Democrats to win a district Donald Trump carried in 2020 – but also faces the historical pitfalls of a mid-term election with a president of his own party in the White House.
New Jersey’s 3rd district will no longer include the Republican stronghold of Ocean County – which Richter won by nearly 15 points in the last election — and instead adds more of Burlington, Hamilton, Lawrence, East Windsor and Hightstown in Mercer and parts of western Monmouth County.
Gov. Phil Murphy lost the old district by more than 14 points in his bid for re-election last year but carried the new 3rd with 50.7% of the vote.
In Trump’s mid-term election, Kim defeated MacArthur by 3,973 votes, 50%-49%, the closest House race in the state. He was re-elected by 33,513 votes, 53%-45% in 2020, becoming the first Democrat to win a second consecutive term in the district since Nathan Stratton won in 1852.
Democrats won the seat in 2008, when John Adler (D-Cherry Hill) won following the retirement of twelve-term Rep. Jim Saxton (R-Bordentown). Adler lost to ex-NFL star Jon Runyan two years later.
MacArthur won the seat in 2014 after Runyan decided four years in Washington were enough.
Healey appears to be the presumptive favorite for the Republican nomination against Will Monk, a Mount Holly school board member.
The son of Korean immigrants, the 39-year-old Kim grew up in Evesham, graduated from the University of Chicago, and was a Rhodes Scholar. He worked at the U.S. Department of State and served in Afghanistan as a civilian advisor to two U.S. Army generals, David Petraeus and John Allen, before joining the White House National Security staff.
Kim gained national attention when he was photographed picking up garbage in the U.S. Capitol after the events of January 6, 2021, and for speaking out after acts of violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders last year.