Andy Kim a Trump supporter? That's what Tammy Murphy wants you to think: Stile

Tammy Murphy, New Jersey first lady-turned-U.S. Senate candidate, hinted during a debate Sunday night at a line of attack that voters will likely see in the increasingly bitter fight for the Democratic nomination.

Her opponent, Rep. Andy Kim, she suggested, is a Trojan horse of Donald Trump’s agenda. She is making the case that Kim ― photographed collecting the debris left behind by the Jan. 6 ransacking of the U.S. Capitol ― is somehow aligned with the former Insurrectionist in Chief.

“Donald Trump is a real problem, and people who work with Donald Trump are also a problem,’’ she said in their first online debate, sponsored by the New Jersey Globe, on Feb. 18.

Murphy’s opposition research team has scrubbed the Kim voting record to find several procedural votes that, they argued, bolstered the Trump-MAGA agenda. One of the more inflammatory claims is that Kim cast votes in favor of an emergency humanitarian aid bill for migrants that failed to include extra protections for children.

“He supported him in not protecting children and sending children to military bases to be in cages,’’ she said during the debate.

But a closer look at some of those votes, and the context in which they were cast, reveals them as run-of-the-mill campaign distortions, teed up for the likely negative attack ads to come from the Murphy campaign.

Yes, there are votes that did, in some cases, break from the Democratic Party line. But they hardly qualify Kim as a stalking horse for the Trump agenda.

There was a vote as a newly minted freshman congressman in January 2019, for example, that would have restricted the use of disaster relief funds to build Trump’s border wall. Kim was one of eight Democrats who voted against the measure, and the lone member among New Jersey’s nine Democrats to do so.

The vote came after reports that Trump was planning to use disaster relief funds, but Kim's hesitancy sprang from a concern that the bill could have limited the nation's ability to repair the existing wall if it sustained damage from a natural event.

But that amendment vote proved to be an outlier in a record of consistent opposition to Trump’s wall project. Kim would go on to cast seven votes in opposition to the wall funding.

Also as a freshman member, in 2019, Kim routinely voted against Trump priorities on major votes, siding with Trump only on pandemic relief, according to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight.com, the political analysis website. Kim voting 6.7% of the time with Trump was consistent with the rest of New Jersey’s blue delegation.

Murphy's line of attack serves as another illustration of how the shadow of Trump hangs over the fierce June 4 contest to replace indicted Sen. Bob Menendez as New Jersey’s Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate.

Kim, who is running a buck-the-party-machine race, is touting his record of “standing up to Trump’’ as perhaps his most valuable credential to Democratic Party committee members and voters as he pursues the nomination.

Though many party regulars outside of Kim’s South Jersey district may not know much about his record, they may be familiar with the photo of him cleaning up the Capitol floor after Jan. 6, an image of sorrow and fury over the attacks that went viral and turned Kim briefly into a cable news celebrity. It's not only essential to his brand, but essential for his fundraising.

So it comes as no surprise that Murphy, who has trailed in at least one independent poll and failed to win the party line in her home county of Monmouth earlier this month, has tried to pick away at Kim’s anti-Trump record.

Kim has pushed back, casting Murphy as a dubious Democrat who began her career as Republican fundraiser and donor, and remained a registered Republican until 2014, a year after her husband, Gov. Phil Murphy, ended his role as President Barack Obama’s U.S. ambassador to Germany.

He has depicted Murphy as an indirect supporter of a whole range of Republican policies that infuriate Democrats, from the failed attempts to abolish the Affordable Care Act to former President George W. Bush’s nomination of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who would later write the Dobbs decision that eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion.

'An act of desperation'

In one attack, the Murphy campaign accused Kim of voting for a bill that provided emergency funding for the border crisis but without "any additional aid" to protect migrant children.

At issue was a June 2019 push to address the growing migrant crisis at the border that had the Trump administration housing undocumented children in overburdened and ill-equipped government facilities, with many separated from their families. Children penned up in kennels like cages became a searing symbol of Trump's zero-tolerance policy on immigration.

Congress came under pressure to address the crisis, and the Democratic-controlled House, led by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, passed a $4.5 billion aid package that included language ensuring the release of unaccompanied migrant children from temporary facilities after three months. It toughened health and safety standards for detention centers.

It also cut funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which became the flashpoint of Trump’s hard-line policies.

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But the Republican-controlled Senate jettisoned some of those changes, throwing the issue back to the House.

The scaled-down version exposed a deep rift among the House Democrats, with progressives insisting on adding back the provisions, while moderates pushed to post the scaled-down version, fearing the political fallout if they failed to take steps to resolve a national, top-of-mind crisis.

And according to published reports at the time, some Democrats feared that cutting ICE funding would have left them vulnerable to charges of being weak on crime in their reelection campaigns. Unable to reach a consensus, Pelosi capitulated to reality and posted the stripped-down Senate bill for a final vote. It was a better-than-nothing proposition, but she was boxed in.

The bill passed 305-102, with six New Jersey Democrats ― ranging from moderates like Rep. Josh Gottheimer of Wyckoff to liberals like Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman of Mercer ― voting for it. (Reps. Bill Pascrell Jr. of Paterson, Frank Pallone of Monmouth and Donald Norcross of Camden opposed it.)

It was a pragmatic, less-than-ideal vote, but it hardly marked Democrats as MAGA foot soldiers.

Former Rep. Tom Malinowski, a Hunterdon County Democrat who voted for the bill, said that by the time it was posted, the courts had already halted the practice of putting unaccompanied children in detention “cages.” Funding for Trump’s border wall project had also been blocked by then, he said.

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“What was left was a need that the members of both parties recognized to provide the agencies responsible for both enforcement of immigration laws and the humanitarian support of migrants what they needed,’’ he said.

The Murphy campaign also cites Kim’s vote against an amendment to the annual Pentagon funding bill that would have barred the use of military bases to house undocumented migrants. “Kids are not prisoners of war. They do not belong on military bases,’’ said Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, a co-sponsor of the measure.

But the plan failed, with 58 Democrats opposing it, including Kim, Malinowski and Gottheimer. That vote served as the basis for Murphy’s charge during the debate that Kim supported putting migrant children in cages at military bases.

But the military facilities had been used in past migrant surges since 1980, including briefly during the Obama administration and currently under President Joe Biden’s administration.

Malinowski, who endorsed Kim’s campaign, called the attack “silly” and said the use of military facilities was a necessary option for the government amid a humanitarian crisis.

The president "has to house people somewhere when there's an overwhelming flow of people across the border. And DOD [the Department of Defense] has facilities,’’ he said. “So, use them.”

Again, its a vote that qualifies Kim and others who voted against the measure not as MAGA sympathizers, but as centrist Democrats making pragmatic choices of governing.

Regardless, its pretty clear that Murphy is likely to challenge Kim’s anti-Trump credentials at every turn in this race.

“This is a man who has not proven that he will stand up to Donald Trump, and I can assure you that I absolutely will,’’ she said during the debate.

After the event in an online news conference with reporters, Kim called Murphy's comments an “act of desperation’’ and an attempt to “twist things.”

“I don’t know what she is talking about,’’ he said.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ election 2024: Andy Kim a Trump supporter? Tammy Murphy makes case