| “Where in the world is Tom Kean Jr.?” That’s the opening line from a blistering new editorial in NorthJersey.com and the New Jersey USA Today Network that calls out Kean Jr. for a “troubling lack of transparency.”
Kean Jr. continues to keep his New Jersey constituents in the dark about his whereabouts after he last voted on March 5th. The Editorial Board notes that Kean Jr.’s silence is “part of a pattern” of dodging voters and the press – including “refusing to hold in-person town halls in his district where he can be questioned directly by constituents.”
The Editorial Board adds “[Kean Jr.’s] behavior reflects a political culture that, from the top, seems devoted to delegitimizing the independent press and ruthlessly controlling the ‘narrative’ presented to voters.”
Read it for yourself:
- Where in the world is Tom Kean Jr.? That’s the political mystery of the moment in New Jersey.
- Kean [has gone] MIA as Congress has been debating the Iran war, funding for the Department of Homeland Security and other critical issues.
- For weeks, Kean’s office didn’t acknowledge the situation and in fact issued a steady stream of first-person social media posts and news releases portraying the illusion of a fully functioning representative.
- Kean Jr. and his staff have handled the situation about as poorly as possible, displaying a troubling lack of transparency. After saying nothing for weeks, the Kean Jr. organization has offered only the most minimal of explanations, and that is nowhere near good enough.
- Unfortunately, Kean’s lack of transparency is part of a pattern. The congressman is notorious for not taking questions from the media.
- Who can forget the embarrassing video, taken by an NJ Spotlight reporter in 2024, in which a stone-faced Kean stood in a Capitol Hill elevator and refused to say a word about anything: immigration policy, Ukraine, football, what he had for lunch[?]
- Kean’s also been criticized for refusing to hold in-person town halls in his district where he can be questioned directly by constituents, instead making do with telephone-only events where queries must be submitted to a moderator.
- The behavior reflects a political culture that, from the top, seems devoted to delegitimizing the independent press and ruthlessly controlling the “narrative” presented to voters.
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