The New Jersey Globe is highlighting how Tom Kean Jr. just waved goodbye to his political future.
Kean Jr. cast the deciding vote to gut Medicaid and rip away food assistance from his constituents, all so that he could fund tax breaks for billionaires – and that vote will cost him his seat next November.
Read the highlights from the reporting on why Kean’s vote will haunt him:
New Jersey Globe: In New Jersey, the political battle over the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ is just beginning
By Joey Fox
May 28, 2025
- When Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) voted last week for his party’s enormous tax and health care bill, he said he’d delivered “a huge win for New Jersey” – and his Democratic opponents crowed that he had cast the vote that would cost him his seat.
- From the outset of GOP negotiations on the bill, Democrats have been sounding the alarm over potential cuts to Medicaid, the massive health care program for low-income and disabled Americans. And the bill that passed last week does indeed reduce federal funding for Medicaid by hundreds of billions of dollars, with the result being that 8.6 million people could stand to lose health coverage (or 13.7 million if the expiration of some Affordable Care Act subsidies are factored in), per the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
- In New Jersey specifically, state health officials have estimated that 360,000 New Jerseyans or more could lose Medicaid coverage, prompting all four Democrats actively running campaigns against Kean… to excoriate the 7th district congressman for his vote (a vote that proved decisive, since the bill passed 215-214).
- “Republicans’ policy platform is wildly unpopular and out-of-step with the American people,” Bryan argued […] “But at the end of the day,” he added, “it’s a bag of shit.”
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