Senator Apologizes For Treatment Of Korean-American Supreme Court Nominee

HACKENSACK—State Sen. Kevin O’Toole (R-40) and Bergen County Executive Kathleen Donovan were among politicians and community leaders who Thursday over the Senate Judiciary Committee’s rejection of New Jersey Supreme Court nominee Phillip Kwon.

Some of the speakers and people in the crowd gathered at the Bergen County Administration Building Thursday afternoon expressed “disappointment,” while others characterized their reaction as “outraged” with the way Kwon was treated at his confirmation hearings, which ultimately resulted in Gov. Chris Christie's pick for the state's highest court being denied by a Judiciary Committee vote of 7-6.

“Not a single person has said [Kwon] is not qualified,” O’Toole said, noting that Kwon is a former assistant United States Attorney for New Jersey currently serving as first assistant in the state Attorney General’s office, and that he has an impeccable record, both in the public and private sectors, for which he is highly respected.

“But you wouldn’t know that if you attended the Senate confirmation hearing,” O’Toole said. “I went down to the Senate that day, thinking for a moment that the state’s capital was going to be there for what we think it is—the sense of fairness, the sense of justice, the sense of equality. And that day didn’t exist because we found out later on that there were several senators who were committed for other reasons not to consider Phil Kwon on the merits, but rather the confirmation process on the politics.”

O’Toole added, “They didn’t ask him a single question about his background.”

Instead, he said, the Judiciary Committee focused on Kwon’s family’s past business and legal woes, which O’Toole described as “a civil dispute with the mom’s business and the dad’s business that was resolved” and in which Kwon was not involved.

“They didn’t care about anything other than that issue,” O’Toole said.

O’Toole, who serves on the Judiciary Committee, called the 7-6 decision “breathtaking,” “outrageous,” “despicable” and “unfair.”

“I don’t come here just because I’m a Korean-Irish legislator,” said O’Toole, whose mother is originally from North Korea. “I come here as an American; I come here as a legislator. And I say to the Korean-American community: I apologize for what the Senate Judiciary Committee did to Phil Kwon and to the community, and that should never happen again.”

He said Kwon and the Korean community were “singled out” for political reasons, partly because they haven’t traditionally been involved in the political process to the extent they could be.

“Now they’re getting involved—as Democrats; as Republicans,” he said. “In the years to come, there will be a record number of Korean-Americans involved in the process, which I couldn’t be happier for.”

Donovan said that in Bergen County, the Korean population is nearly 100,000, “and it keeps growing every day.” The 2010 census puts the county's Korean population at just under 57,000.

“The Korean community in Bergen County is growing; it’s vibrant,” Donovan said. “The sense of outrage on my part continues. [Kwon] didn’t even get a fair hearing in this situation, and that’s very wrong.”

Former president of the Korean American Association of Fort Lee (KAAFL) and chairman of the 2010 Korean American Census Task Force Andrew Kim said that when Kwon was nominated by Gov. Chris Christie for the NJ Supreme Court, the Korean community had “very high hopes,” and saw it as a source of pride.

A gathered about 8,000 signatures on a petition and delivered it to state Senators, according to Kim. Up until about a week before Kwon’s confirmation hearings, the Korean community remained hopeful, with indications pointing to Kwon’s ultimate confirmation, he said.

“But when we heard about his vote down situation, we were devastated,” Kim said. “And some of the Democratic people that we trusted didn’t deliver our hope and the promise that they’ve been giving us.”

Kim said the Korean community is in the process of forming another grassroots political organization with the aim of getting more people in the community to register to vote, and of getting those who are registered to exercise their right to do so.

“We need be a little bit more active, and we need to learn from this situation,” Kim said.

Fort Lee resident Keith Jensen, a 2011 Republican candidate for State Assembly in District 37, told Patch he was surprised but glad to see Kim “standing side-by-side with Republicans.”

“I hope that means at a local level,” Jensen told Patch. “I look forward to an announcement that the Korean will have a dialogue with Republicans in District 37, in particular Fort Lee, which Andrew has not established yet, although we speak with other Korean respresentatives within the community.”

Bergen County Freeholder chairman John D. Mitchell of Cliffside Park read an excerpt from a resolution unanimously passed by the bipartisan board earlier this month denouncing the Judiciary Committee’s decision on Kwon:

This board feels that the residents of Bergen County in the State of New Jersey have been denied an opportunity to have a qualified nominee voted by the full Senate for representation to the state’s highest court.

Joan Voss of Fort Lee was among six of the seven current Freeholders who attended the event in Hackensack Thursday.

Voss told Patch she has had a close association with the Korean community for more than 20 years. She called Kwon’s failed nomination a “slap in the face.”

“[Korean-Americans] are getting involved in the [Fort Lee] Board of Education,” Voss said. “I hope that they’re going to run for town council in the foreseeable future, and I think that this was a great insult to the Korean community what happened in Trenton.”

Voss also said she doesn’t know what motivated the Judiciary Committee’s decision.

Kathy Lee, a vice president of the KAAFL, said frankly that Kwon could have been rejected in part because of his ethnicity.

“I think that’s really a big part of it,” Lee said. “The whole system, the whole process, it’s like they want to keep everything within themselves.”

KAAFL president Gina Yoon, a staunch supporter and friend of Kwon’s, acknowledged her deep disappointment as well, but said she didn’t support the nominee simply because he was Korean, but rather because she felt he really was more than qualified to do the job.

“But the process was really unfair,” Yoon said, adding that she met with Kwon a few days ago, and that Kwon told her that in seven hours of hearings, “they interviewed him only about his family members; not about his qualifications for the position.”

“[Kwon] was sick and tired of those questions and also just tired,” Yoon said. “And he was also disappointed. He was the victim of [partisan politics].”

O’Toole said he’s been assured by Senate President Stephen M. Sweeney (D-3) that an investigation into why certain details of Kwon’s confidential questionnaire that never should have been made public were apparently “illegally” leaked prior to his confirmation hearings.

“The Senate president was outraged when this occurred, and I’ve asked him if he’s doing his own investigation, which he is,” O’Toole said. “Well, the clock’s ticking. I’m sure he’s at the point where he’s got to disclose something.”

O’Toole warned that if that doesn’t happen, “This will go to some other level; some other form.”