Andy Kim: Toxic Politics

Ken Harbaugh:

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Andy Kim:

But I've been saying this line a lot lately, where I say, “I believe the opposite of democracy is apathy.” And it's so important to fight against that sense of helplessness. So, when you see the Marjorie Taylor Greenes and the Speaker Johnsons and you're like, “I don't want anything to do with this,” you have to remember that just gives them more space to run.

Ken Harbaugh:

I am Ken Harbaugh, and this is Burn the Boats, a podcast where experts and changemakers share their thoughts on the most pressing issues of the day. My guest today is an old friend, Andy Kim, who represents New Jersey's 3rd Congressional district, and recently, won the Democratic nomination for that state's senate seat.

He's also one of only seven Democrats who won their house elections in districts carried by Trump. We got a lot to learn from Andy today. Welcome to the show.

Andy Kim:

Thanks for having me, Ken.

Ken Harbaugh:

So, be honest with us, are you just running for the Senate because the House of Representatives has become the most awful workplace in America? You've got Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene as coworkers that has to be getting really old by now.

Andy Kim:

I mean, look, we have the most extreme speaker of the house probably in American history, but I have to say it's not like the Senate is the most well-oiled machine. Still some challenges there in terms of personality.

So, look, my first boss at the State Department when I started working there, he had this line. He said, “You don't have good government unless you have good people working in government.” And I still believe in that.

And I've heard some of my house colleagues the ones that drive me crazy, but I've heard them basically say out loud that their plan is to try to make politics so toxic that regular, thoughtful, reasonable people don't want to participate in it.

The main thing is you can't seed the ground, you can't let them take over. So, it's important to be able to have public servants there.

Ken Harbaugh:

I think that sentiment applies broadly: not seeding the ground. I mean, I respect you and the folks we ran alongside in 2018 enormously for sticking it out. But that same sentiment applies to why I have the flag behind me. We can't give these things up. We can't let them have it, or they will take it and destroy it as they are trying to do with patriotism, as they are trying to do with democracy.

You just described Speaker Johnson as the most extreme speaker in the history of the country, but I've also heard you say that he's basically a co-speaker with Hakeem Jeffries. He can't do anything without your help. Can you explain that dynamic?

Andy Kim:

Yeah, well, just on that first point, I've been saying this a lot lately, a lot of people, they see the craziness in the house and it turns them off from politics, it makes them not want to engage. But I've been saying this line a lot lately where I say, “I believe the opposite of democracy is apathy.” And it's so important to fight against that sense of helplessness.

So, when you see the Marjorie Taylor Greenes and the Speaker Johnsons and you're like, “I don't want anything to do with this,” you have to just remember that just gives them more space to run, and it's important for us to be able to push back.

But look, the dynamics are such that we have an unbelievably narrow majority in the House of Representatives for the Republicans, and they've just shown that they're incapable of governing. The governing is not something that they're able to do just given their dynamics. I mean, and this is the problem.

You have people there in that Congress, in that caucus on the Republican side, that are more interested in being social influencers online rather than lawmakers. They don't actually want to govern. What they want to do is try to make a point, try to boost their own ego, their ambition. That's what we're dealing with.

And so, if we do need to get things done … I mean, look what happened at the Defense Authorization Act, something that normally is a very bipartisan bill, but they just turned it into a political weapon, something that just fall so short of one of our service members.

So, it's a challenge and it's very frustrating. And look, there's no beating around the bush of this is added to the reason why a lot of my colleagues are retiring, don't want to have anything to do with this. But again, we have to be very careful not to do this in a way that gives them more power.

Ken Harbaugh:

You said that the Republican caucus is incapable of governing, well, you also said that there are some who don't want to govern. That seems to be the driving motivation, like chaos is the point. It's not that they can't get their act together, they don't want to.

The chaos serves them. The appearance of dysfunction of a federal government that doesn't work actually emboldens their ideological approach to the Republican project these days.

Andy Kim:

I’d even caution in calling it ideological because it's just reactionary, they just want to shut it down. I don't really think that there's some grand strategy behind it. It's just that we live in a time … like I work in what's arguably the most reactionary building in America.

People are just reacting to whatever is in the headlines and whatever vote is ahead of us. And so, it just becomes this sort of scenario where people, they just want to be opposed to things, like then this was a challenge.

Like last year, when the debt ceiling crisis was happening, it's incredibly difficult. People are like, “Oh, are you going to negotiate and avoid the debt ceiling from collapsing under us?” And it's challenging because some of the people that are in congress, they want us to default out our debt.

They want our government to shut down. It's hard to negotiate to avoid a government shutdown when people are like that's what they want. They want to bring it to a grinding halt, they want to create a circus, a show.

They want to be able to flex their muscles to show that they are powerful enough to bring down the speaker of the house like Matt Gaetz was, or shut down the government. That's how they view their strength.

Matt Gaetz has his line. He says something to the effect of like, “If you're not on the news, you're not governing.” It's something to that effect. And I just find that to be so indicative of what's wrong with our politics right now. It equates the idea of attention, like governance is attention rather than impact.

So, you can see how someone with that mindset, how they're incentivized to say crazy things. Because if it's about attention, well, you can get attention by shutting down the government or saying crazy incendiary things on the house floor or whatnot. And so, our reward system is broken.

I've often thought, like a Congress's game, if you gamify Congress, what are the point systems? How do you advance? It's like fundraising, social media, like likes and followers – and where in that gamification point system is legislation, where is doing oversight over the executive branch and these other duties, and it's become so far from what we deserve.

Ken Harbaugh:

I don't think most voters realize even the ones who support those firebrands, the performative politicians, just how much they depend on the system ultimately, delivering for them. I'm looking at Lauren Boebert's ribbon cuttings in Colorado, taking credit for all of these infrastructure projects that she voted against, and our friend Jason Crow has been great at calling her out for that.

But you have that repeated in district after district after district where the Matt Gaetz and the Marjorie Taylor Greenes and the Lauren Boeberts of the world engage in this kind of performative politics, but then take credit when things actually get done that they had nothing to do with.

Andy Kim:

It's really something, just kind of the shamelessness with which people approach this work and it's something that I think is — people have asked me, “Do they really believe what they're saying?” I get that question a lot. Like, “Do these people really believe what they're saying?”

And it's interesting, about six years ago when I first came into Congress, I would say look, I kind of categorize the Republicans. There's the kind of traditional conservatives of which there are very few of them left. Then there are the crazies, and you can fill in the blank, whatever name comes to mind.

And then there's like the cowards. People who know better, but they don't do it because they're looking out for themselves, kind of the Kevin McCarthys and others. But unfortunately, there are a lot more of the crazies than there were even just six years ago.

A lot of these people, I mean, I saw it on January 6th, I saw after the riot, and they're giving these speeches about the stolen election – either they're just amazing actors or they really do believe it. And it's scary. It's really scary.

I was maybe 20 feet away from Marjorie Taylor Greene, and a couple other Republicans at the exact moment that the Dobbs decision came out, we were on the house floor. And they were just high fiving each other, hugging each other, just celebrating and say they never thought the day would ever come.

I mean, it was really shocking, and it was really sad. It was just really disturbing to see that kind of celebration of the restriction of rights of Americans while we're standing on the sacred ground of the house chamber. These are scary times.

Ken Harbaugh:

There is a picture of you from January 6th that went viral, and I think it spoke to a lot of people about what we need to do or needed to do as a country in the aftermath. You were cleaning up after the rioters desecrated our nation's capital.

I'm wondering if any of your Republican colleagues spoke to you about that photo, if you have conversations with them about the significance of January 6th, or is that the kind of thing that they just forced themselves to forget about?

Andy Kim:

I can't really recall any, really in-depth conversations at all. I mean, there was the day of, and I remember being in the House chamber immediately after they reopened, the Capitol after the riot had been quelled.

I remember hearing Kevin McCarthy speak, he was the first Republican to speak on the House floor after the riot. And he said, something to the effect of like, “This is the worst day that I've ever had in this job, in public service.”

And so, obviously, he very quickly forgot that he said those words and very much changed his tune, and just said, “We need to turn the page of America,” I think is how he framed it. But I just said, “Look, you can't turn the page of American history until you write the page of American history.”

We need to document what happened before you turn the page. It just drives me crazy. What we often get, and this is what happens in just politics very large these days; is if you engage on something that is difficult like January 6th, oftentimes, the Republicans I talk to, they'll just deflect it.

And they'll talk about, “Oh, well, Democrats complained when this and this happened, or that and that happened,” they don't actually confront this. I feel like we should all just universally be able to say what happened on January 6th should not happen in our country, should not happen in a democracy.

Yourself, you and I served in some of the same countries and in difficult parts around the world, whether or not you have the peaceful transfer of power is pretty much the defining characteristic of a mature democracy, and we failed that on January 6th.

And that should be very alarming to us about the state of our country and the fragility of our democracy. But just the unwillingness for them to say anything, I think, speaks unfortunately, a lot about just the moment that we're in and the cowardice that is around us.

Ken Harbaugh:

Well, the one person we haven't mentioned so far, you just brought up the word cowardice, is Donald Trump. And I feel like what you're really saying is that they are afraid that the leader of the Republican Party who has a massive following prone to violence as was demonstrated on January 6th, might come down on them.

That's the cowardice we're talking about. We're talking about a party that is now in the thrall of a cult leader prone to violence.

Andy Kim:

I mean, it may not necessarily be Donald Trump that they're scared of directly, but just the atmosphere that has been created or the backlash from the MAGA population and others. I mean, it breaks my heart, like those Republicans that voted to impeach Trump and the death threats that they got, and the violence within our politics whether it's physical violence like January 6th.

And I sat down recently with the family of Officer Sicknick who is from here in New Jersey and is someone that we lift up to remember just how devastating that day was, or like to the verbal threats and to members of Congress's family, his and others, I mean, it's crazy. It's scary times.

I think that that's what I worry about right now. It's like I see the democracy that is so easily manipulated by disinformation, by threats, by violence, by a tribalism, and a binaryness that prevents and restricts genuine freedom of expression and thoughts and debate, and it's scary.

I mean, I got a 6-year-old and 8-year-old, I got a first grader and a third grader in the final days of school right now here in Jersey, and I worry about what kind of America they're going to grow up in. This is not the kind of deliberative democracy that inspired my parents 50 years ago to travel halfway around the world to be able to start a family.

And so, I think it's just one of those things we have to make sure we don't just take it for granted and assume that it'll always be as strong of a country as we would like it to be. And I do think that Trump is definitely instigating a lot of this, but he cannot thrive unless there is this deficiency within our society, this kind of unraveling that is there.

The way I sort of describe it, is being a Democrat that won a district Trump won, is there's such distrust in government here. And oftentimes people think, oh, battleground district, it's like a blue army and a red army duking it out every day. But honestly, it's the vast majority of people in my Congressional district can't stand either party right now, and that's what gives Trump space.

That's why I'm so focused on this mission of how to try to restore trust and integrity back into our politics. Because I think that's what takes the oxygen away from Donald Trump, which takes away from the fertile ground of which he's able to grow this very scary devastation upon our democracy here.

But it's going to be a challenge. And we see here in New Jersey, 84% of people in my home state of New Jersey believe that their politicians are corrupt. You can see why that's ground where Trump and others can get their roots into and that's something that we need to really fix.

Ken Harbaugh:

Let's talk about corruption in politics for a second because I want to get specific. There's obviously corruption on both sides, but I think there is a material difference in how a responsible party handles that kind of corruption versus how a co-opted, irresponsible party handles it.

And let's just talk about New Jersey for a second. You've got a couple of major cases; Menendez and who's the other one? Is it Norcross?

Andy Kim:

Yeah.

Ken Harbaugh:

George Norcross.

Andy Kim:

Just found the other day, yeah.

Ken Harbaugh:

And I think it is a testament, even though they are both Democrats or Menendez was – it is a testament to the maturity and responsibility of the Democratic Party when you look at how they have handled the corruption in the ranks.

Can you describe what's happening, and then we can riff on how the Republican Party handles corruption, it elevates it, but what is the state of that in New Jersey right now?

Andy Kim:

Look, I mean, you are right, my senior senator, he was indicted last year, and I think that indictment really captured the attention of the country because it involved gold bars at foreign countries. And that's the kind of stuff that really builds into this sense of distrust.

But look, I wanted to show that myself, that I don't stand for that, that I hope my party doesn't stand for that, and I stepped up to run against them. The next day, I was not planning to run for senate, this was not in the cards, as I told you, I'm a young father, young kids, I got my hands full, statewide race was not what was in my card debt for 2024.

But I felt compelled to step up to try to show people that I'm going to give the people of New Jersey a choice. And that when we see allegations of corruption and challenges there, we want to make sure that accountability is there.

And I hope people see that as a stark difference to what's happening with Donald Trump right now, or happening with the Republican Party, celebrating and lifting up and protecting those that are accused or convicted of corruption in different ways, and that's just the difference.

I mean, look, New Jersey has its problems. The Democratic party has its problems and New Jersey, around the country, there are things we need to fix, but I hope people see that willingness to engage it and fix, that's what we need to invest in. I feel like a reform agenda is powerful, not just in New Jersey, but around the country.

People are yearning, there's a hunger for a new generation of leadership to step up, but also for a different kind of politics, and a politics that moves away from partisan knife fighting and tries to center itself more towards public service, which is what people really ultimately want.

So, I think that that's going to be the challenge of our generation in politics, is to try to see if we can pivot away from this tailspin that we've been in for the last couple decades.

And I just think we need a new Kennedy moment, a new like ask now what your country can do for you kind of moment, and just reinvigorate that sense of public service. And that's what I hope others believe in and hope we can try to build that.

Ken Harbaugh:

Well, I think your nomination, your winning the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat is a great sign of that kind of progress because it wasn't just democratic leaders in New Jersey and across the country who said, “We've got to root out the kind of corruption that Menendez represents.”

It was obviously, in the case of a democratic primary race, an expression of the popular will, New Jerseyans want you to represent them over an incredibly powerful, entrenched Democrat who was stealing money. I mean, that's got to be an uplifting sign for you.

Andy Kim:

I mean, look, and my primary ended up being a very dramatic primary. And I'll be honest, I was seen as a distant underdog when I first started this. Because, New Jersey, we've had a problem with machine politics, with the politics that allows a handful of party leaders, party bosses to basically have their way.

And then we see that right now with the latest indictment of Norcross. These are longstanding challenges that we faced in New Jersey. So, a lot of people in Jersey politics said, I was throwing away my career that there's no way that I can win this primary here.

But we really showed that like no, look, people in New Jersey, they don't want to be told who to vote for. They want to make up their own mind that they want to be able to show that they're in the driver's seat of their democracy. And that wasn't happening before and we're fixing that, we're changing.

I filed a federal lawsuit to change our ballots to make them more fair, to try to bring out permanent change, not just for my race, but for all elections going forward.

So, yes, it's been a challenge, and yes, there are things that we need to change and reform even within the Democratic party or the way that we operate, but that's what I hope people see, is the energy is there.

But again, you can't feel like it's just helpless. You can't be like, “Oh, corruption is too endemic. There's no way we can change it.” You got to be able to take these steps to put yourself in a place to be able to fix it.

That's what we're trying to do in New Jersey. And it's created not just a campaign, but a movement, like a real grassroots movement for better democracy. It's inspiring. I've never seen anything like this in my lifetime here in New Jersey.

Ken Harbaugh:

What do your kids think? You've mentioned them a few times, and they are the stars of your Twitter channel. And I've talked to politicians who take a very different approach, but they're part of your – I shouldn't say brand because that cheapens it, but they're part of you, and you talk about them in your political races, and I'm just wondering how much do they understand the stakes and what's going on?

Andy Kim:

For a while, I didn't really talk about them or have them much on my social media, but I realized that look, someone asked me why am I in politics? I never thought I'd be in politics. Honestly, I still to this day, I'm not really into politics. I'm not really into this type of at least politics in its current form of just knife fighting partisanship.

But it's because I'm a dad, I'm worried about what kind of American my kids are going to grow up in. And so, people can't get to know me or understand my motivations without being able to understand my kids and my role. My 8-year-old and 6-year-old, they're starting to … the older one is starting to understand what I do. That's been cool.

My younger one though, he's just fascinated. My neighbor across the street, his name's Matt, and he had a yard sign up with my name on it. My younger son's like, “Why doesn't Matt have his name on his sign? Why does he have your name?” He clearly has no idea what's going on in that way.

But I hope that they're taking away what this is about, which again, it's about that sense of public service, or as my older kid, Ty likes to talk about it, “Just trying to help.” And so, that's the hope. But it's a challenge.

I mean, they were 1-year-old and 3-year-old when I came into Congress, and it's hard, I'm away from them a lot. And sometimes, I worry I'm not being the kind of dad that they need. But I come to really believe, especially through the pandemic, I learned this.

I think it's important to have the voices of young parents in Congress, in the House, in the Senate, in politics to be able to talk about what it's like right now, to dealing and worrying about these issues in school or in any other aspect of their lives.

And I hope to be able to bring that kind to a perspective to the U.S. Senate where, look, I mean, I come in as the fourth youngest senator in the country. I'd be the first Korean American ever, the first Asian American ever from the east coast of America in the Senate, from a lot of different perspectives, I think I can add an interesting voice.

Ken Harbaugh:

You have said that you have just as much of a right as anyone else to represent New Jersey, and the subtext there is your Korean American heritage. How much has that shaped your messaging and your idea of representation, and how have the headwinds been?

Because I know at state you experienced some pretty awful prejudice because of where your parents came from.

Andy Kim:

I mean, it's been a challenge. I'm the son of immigrants, married to an immigrant, and you’re right, when I was at the State Department, I remember I came back from Afghanistan and I was back in main State Department and building in D.C., and I received a letter one day telling me that I've now been banned from working on issues related to Korea because I'm Korean American.

And that was really humiliating, I literally just served my country as a civilian embedded with the military in a war zone. I had top secret security clearance, I've gone through it all. But the way it made it feel like is they were saying like, they don't know if I would be 100% loyal to this country, which made me feel like they're saying I'm not 100% American and that was very hurtful.

And I've felt that at other phases. I mean, my Congressional district, when I first started, it was 85% white, less than 3% Asian that voted for Trump. And I had a lot of people tell me there's just no way this district's going to elect someone that looks like me to be their voice in Congress. And I had a lot of people tell me that there's just no chance.

But this is where I grew up, I did my whole K through 12 in the public schools here. So, as you said, I want to say, I think I have every bit as much right to represent this district or my own state as anybody else.

I'm as American as anybody else. My story's not just a Korean American story or an Asian American story, it's fundamentally an American story. So, my parents raised me a bit stubborn, so I've kind of stayed at it, but it's not easy.

My first race, they ran these ads, the Republicans ran these ads against me saying, “Andy Kim, he's not one of us.” Now, I've heard that kind of stuff before, it hurts. But I've now had this district three times elect me to be their voice in Congress, even though the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people don’t look like me.

If all goes along November, I'll be again, the first Asian America elected to the U.S. Senate from the east coast of America. Cory Booker and I would be the first — well, we would be the only all minority senate delegation in the country, showing that it doesn't matter what you look like, it matters about what you want to get done, the work you want to do in public service.

So, that's the kind of America I want to believe in. That's the kind of America I want to raise two Asian American little boys, and hopefully, they'll grow up recognizing that anything's possible in the way that my mom and my dad wanted 50 years ago when they came here. So, we're still writing the story and we're still trying to shape it, but I'm going to do my part.

Ken Harbaugh:

What's the state of the race? Because it's a pretty complicated field right now. It's not like many other senate races. We've got a pretty clean matchup, although it's going to be a dirty fight here in Ohio, but what's going on in New Jersey?

Andy Kim:

No, like I said, I had a very dramatic primary, and then now it's going into a dramatic general election. So, I guess the biggest element here is that Senator Menendez is in the race running as a third-party independent candidate.

So, that just adds a lot more complexity, having the city senator still in the race, he has millions of dollars in the bank still, even though he's in the courtroom still, and we just don't know what that's going to do to the race.

We also have a very wealthy self-funding, Republican. I have the great honor of being the only candidate in the country to run against four straight self-funders in four straight races. So, I've learned about it. It's not comfortable when people can spend millions of dollars of their own money.

But look, I also get the sense right now that Americans are tired of just a politics for the well-off and the well-connected. They don't want to be with high rising prices in America. They don't want to be lectured too by a multimillionaire in terms of how they're going to fix this, they've heard that all before.

And to have somebody here who's a big supporter of the Dobbs decision that took away rights for women, that's not the kind of person we keep representing New Jersey. So, hopefully, people will see through that, but there's concerns.

We don't know what the Menendez dynamic's going to do. We don't know how many votes he could potentially take away from me. So, we're going to run the strongest campaign possible, do everything we can to be able to mobilize.

And I've been in tough races before against Republican self-funders. I know how to win, I just need the resources to do it. So, that's what we're trying to build out right now.

Ken Harbaugh:

Well, we'll put a link in the show notes, maybe help you out a little bit. I got to end with a super divisive, controversial question here: do you fall in the camp of taking your Lego kits apart after you're done with them, or do they sit on a shelf, and I'm going to put this this tweet up here for context?

Andy Kim:

Yeah, the Lego Millennium Falcon. I would guess in my basement now it has shelves filled with X-Wings, TIE bombers, the Millennium Falcon and others. We had them up in our living room, but my wife said, “These got to go.”

But no, I do let my kids play with them though. I don't get so crazy that I don't let them touch them, but I don't let them take it all apart after what we put them through because-

Ken Harbaugh:

You're not Lord Business. Awesome. Well, Andy, great as always catching up with you. Good luck in the race, link in the show notes. Thanks for coming on.

Andy Kim:

Yeah. No, thanks so much. I appreciate it. It's great chatting with you, and yeah, those that want to help out, they can go to at andykim.com. Thanks a lot, Ken.

Ken Harbaugh:

Thanks for listening to Burn the Boats. If you have any feedback, please email the team at [email protected]. We're always looking to improve the show.

For updates and more, follow us on Twitter at Team_Harbaugh. And if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to rate and review.

Burn the Boats is a production of Evergreen Podcasts. Our producer is Declan Rohrs, and Sean Rule-Hoffman is our audio engineer. Special thanks to Evergreen executive producers, Joan Andrews, Michael DeAloia, and David Moss.

I'm Ken Harbaugh and this is Burn the Boats, a podcast about big decisions.