Sen. Andy Kim Gets Disgraceful Welcome In Trenton

New Jersey Monitor

December 9, 2025

Democratic U.S. Sen. Andy Kim spent months fighting New Jersey Democratic Party leaders in 2024 over the county line, with Kim defeating them in court multiple times and then handily winning election to his current seat last year.

Judging by the reception Kim received in committee room six at the Trenton Statehouse annex on Monday, there are still a lot of hurt feelings on the losing side.

Kim was there to testify against a bill to revamp the state comptroller’s office, a measure sponsored by Senate President Nicholas Scutari (D) that has sparked outrage in the state’s progressive circles. Normally, state lawmakers give their fellow elected officials a chance to testify first during committee hearings, but Kim’s fellow Democrats decided to make him wait.

So Kim waited. And waited. And waited. Even when some witnesses who were called to speak before Kim said they would cede their time to him so he could testify and then head to D.C., state Sen. Jim Beach (D-Camden), the chair of the committee hearing the bill, said no.

“Nobody’s special,” Beach said. “I have a list, and we’re going in order.”

Beach even read a seemingly never-ending list of names of people who said they didn’t want to testify before calling Kim’s name.

When it was Kim’s turn to speak, Beach was peevish, cutting Kim off the second Kim spoke beyond the three-minute deadline Beach had earlier implemented, seemingly just for critics of the bill.

“Sir, I have been here for five-and-a-half hours,” Kim told Beach.

“Yeah, so what?” Beach responded. “So has everyone else. Why do you think you’re special? You’re not.”

Listen, I’m all for the Legislature not giving special treatment to dignitaries and forcing them to wait in line with the rest of the hoi polloi when bills are getting heard. But that’s not how it generally goes in Trenton, where even Jim McGreevey, the former governor who resigned two decades ago after getting caught hiring his secret boyfriend to a state job with a six-figure salary, gets to cut in line when he wants to testify on a bill. Surely a sitting senator can get the same treatment as a disgraced former governor.

Scutari’s comments to reporters prior to Monday’s hearing indicate Beach’s decision to keep Kim waiting was a strategy, not an attempt to be fair to the masses. They thought he would eventually bail and return to D.C., which is where Scutari said Kim should have been on Monday.

“I think he should be in Washington overseeing what he’s supposed to be doing there instead of coming here and criticizing a bill that he hadn’t had an opportunity to read yet, and asking me to get up there first and asking me for special treatment in terms of the hearing. I doubt that he remains here,” Scutari said.

From left, Attorney General Matt Platkin, U.S. Sen. Andy Kim, and acting Comptroller Kevin Walsh speak against a bill that would limit the comptroller’s powers at the Trenton Statehouse on Dec. 1, 2025. (Photo by Anne-Marie Caruso/New Jersey Monitor)

Kim told me he had indeed read the bill and that he did not ask for special treatment, saying he arrived at the Statehouse 90 minutes before the hearing started to make sure he could get his name early on the speaker list (I can confirm some of that; I was behind him at security when he entered the building).

As for Beach’s hostility, Kim said he doesn’t know where it came from. He said he’s met Beach maybe once before, and cannot recall a single face-to-face conversation they’ve ever had.

Kim said what stuck out to him about Monday’s hearing was an interaction Beach had during Kim’s testimony with another person in the audience. This was after Beach said Kim had to stop speaking because of Beach’s made-up three-minute rule.

“I yielded my three minutes to Sen. Kim,” the audience member said.

“I don’t care about you,” Beach shot back.

Kim said he’s been thinking about Beach’s response for the last 24 hours.

“That is just such a disgraceful thing to say to a fellow New Jerseyan, to people that we represent. I can never imagine, no matter how much someone would yell at me about Trump or anything else, I just cannot ever imagine the words coming out of my mouth,” he said. “It’s the opposite of what public service and being an elected official’s about.”

Kim is right that Beach’s behavior Monday represents the opposite of what being an elected official is all about. But sadly, it’s too often what being an elected official in Trenton is all about.

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