U.S. Rep. Tom Kean Jr. hasn’t cast a vote in almost two months.
The New Jersey Republican has missed critical votes on Capitol Hill, as his party’s leaders try to marshal support for homeland security funding, citizen surveillance and more.
And Kean is missing from public view as the campaign for his seat in Congress heats up, with his office only briefly saying he’s out due to a “personal health matter,” but offering no further details. Four Democrats are facing off in June’s primary for the chance to challenge Kean, hoping to be buoyed by President Donald Trump’s low approval ratings.
Now Kean and his challengers must grapple with how they will, or if they should, address the Republican’s absence on the campaign trail. It’s a particularly delicate balancing act for a representative who's already often criticized for being distant from the general public — declining to hold in-person town halls and being largely unavailable to media.
"If we get to September or October, and Tom's opponent is focusing their attack ads on a brief medical absence, I'd feel good about our re-election chances," said Kean's spokesperson Harrison Neely.
Kean’s last vote in Congress came on March 5, when he supported a measure to restore funding for all parts of the Department of Homeland Security. Before that, he’d rarely missed votes in the House chamber since joining Congress in 2023. His office told NJ Spotlight News last month he’d be "returning to a full regular schedule” but didn’t answer questions about his health or expected timing. Kean broke his silence with a statement on social media Monday.
“My doctors continue to assure me that my recovery will be complete and that I will be back to the job I love very soon. I expect to return to a full schedule and be at 100%,” Kean wrote. “I take my responsibilities seriously and have a strong record of showing up and delivering, which makes this absence all the more difficult.”
Neely declined to provide any further details on Kean’s condition or when he may return to public life.
New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District sprawls across six counties from the Union County suburbs to the rural communities along the Delaware River. It’s considered the Garden State's most competitive district, and is viewed as a critical seat for determining which party will take control of the House this November. Kean, the son of a popular governor and a former state Senate minority leader, was elected to the seat in 2022.
I take my responsibilities seriously ... which makes this absence all the more difficult.
Democrats and many community activists have long criticized Kean for being inaccessible to constituents, pointing to a lack of in-person town halls. Even before winning his seat, he earned a reputation among New Jersey media for being stubbornly unavailable. A grassroots group called Finding Kean Fridays has regularly held rallies in the district protesting Kean’s policy positions, often with a cardboard cutout of Kean in tow.
Amalia Duarte is an organizer for Finding Kean Fridays. She’s also one of two Democrats on the Mendham Township committee, serving a wealthy Morris County community that was mostly shifted into the district after the last round of redistricting.
Mendham Township had previously been represented in Congress by Mikie Sherrill, New Jersey’s current governor. Duarte says Sherrill was more regularly seen at community events during her tenure, like an annual clam bake.
“Honestly, as an elected official, I want to get to know everybody because I want to have things done in my town and they have the leverage to do it,” Duarte said.” So when I put on my elected-official hat, I want to reach out to them. And if he's going to be at a breakfast, I might go to that and say hi to him and try to get to know him. But he just hasn't done that sort of outreach.”
Duarte said she hopes Kean has a speedy, full recovery, but she wished that he’d announced sooner that the absence was for medical reasons, given his reputation for being distant from the district.
“We're all human beings and I certainly don't wish ill upon him at all. The few times I've had a chance to meet him, he is always very gracious and respectful, and myself to him, likewise,” Duarte said. “ I hope he recovers. I hope he gets back to work and I do hope he's willing to meet with constituents and hold a town hall.”
Bill Palatucci, a national committeemember for New Jersey's Republican Party, said he doesn’t expect the absence will change how district voters feel about Kean.
"Everybody has encountered some unexpected medical emergency affecting a family member," Paltucci said.
What's fair to keep private?
Tom Malinowski, the Democrat who represented the district before losing the seat to Kean in 2022, said Kean should give the public more information about what is going on.
"There's a long history of elected officials being straight with their constituents about specific health problems that they may have,” Malinowski said. “Especially when the health problem is preventing them from carrying out their most basic duties. If this was the president or another member of Congress, we would know."
Then-Rep. Donald Payne Jr., a Democrat who represented Newark, died in 2024 after suffering a heart attack and being hospitalized for weeks. Payne’s office issued statements describing his condition. Payne had been running unopposed in that year’s primary election, which he won posthumously before being replaced on the ballot for the general election.
Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican nominee in New Jersey’s past three gubernatorial races, told voters of his throat cancer during the first of those campaigns.
Chris Russell, a Republican strategist who worked for Ciattarelli’s campaign, said there’s no cookie-cutter way of dealing with a candidate’s health concerns.
“ I think there's an argument to be made that being public about it can make someone appear more sympathetic or humanize them in a way, which is not something politicians really get much of these days,” Russell said. “If someone wants to share their personal health struggle, whether that's physical health, mental health, whatever the case may be, there's someone else out there, probably a lot of someone else's, that can relate to that.”
Ultimately though, Russell said, it’s up to the candidate to decide how much about their private medical situation they want to put in the public sphere — and then it’s up to campaign strategists to decide what to do with the candidates’ wishes.
There's a long history of elected officials being straight with their constituents about specific health problems that they may have.
Russell noted that Kean’s campaign has apparently been able to keep up fundraising momentum in recent weeks. The campaign had raised more than $4.3 million for this year’s cycle as of the end of March.
Russell expects Kean’s inability to be on the campaign trail isn’t a problem yet, because he has no challenger in June’s primary. Instead, the focus is on the Democrats vying for the party’s nomination in the district — former Navy helicopter pilot Rebecca Bennett, physician Dr. Tina Shah, former Biden administration official Michael Roth and businessman Brian Varela.
The Democrats have largely avoided Kean’s ongoing absence, though Roth told Gothamist Kean's constituents deserved transparency.
"If he is well enough to raise campaign money, voters deserve to know when he will be back doing the job they elected him to do," Roth said.
Roth said it's up to Kean to decide how much he wants to disclose about his health — but that someone calling out from work with a medical issue would tell their boss if that's the case, "and I think that's what the people deserve because the people are his boss, not his donors."
Representatives of the Varela and Shah campaigns declined to comment. The Bennett campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Riding a line
Dan Cassino, a political science professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Morris and Bergen counties, said attacks on a candidate's health problems are generally seen as out of bounds. He said Democrats will have to balance that with attacking Kean for being generally absent from the district, which can be a powerful strategy against incumbents.
“ They have to separate out the medical issues from the not-showing-up-for-work part,” Cassino said. “If they can manage to ride that line, it can be a very effective campaign attack.”
Malinowski said the candidates will still need to be prepared to field questions on Kean’s absence when they’re meeting with voters.
"It's going to come up, even if they don't raise it,” Malinowski said. “Everyone who follows politics in the 7th District even slightly is talking about this."
Russell warned the situation could be politically fraught for Kean’s opponents.
“ If they try to push the envelope too far here and somehow make his illness or whatever he's dealing with part of this idea that he's not accessible, I think it'll hurt them,” Russell said. “The voters who are going to decide the election, I think, would find it offensive if they used his health issues against him in a way that is unfair in terms of his accessibility.”
Duarte agreed with Russell. She said she thinks the Democrats are better off leaving the matter alone.
“ To say anything and then it might come out that he had something serious, I think you would just, human-to-human, look terrible,” Duarte said.
The length of Kean’s absence may ultimately determine if it's a factor in the election. Micah Rasmussen, director of Rider University's Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics, said other issues will likely grab voters' attention if Kean returns soon.
“ If it is a good distance from the election from either the primary or the general, then I would say that this is not gonna be top of mind for voter,” Rasmussen said.
What if a member of Congress resigns?
There have been no indications that Kean intends to vacate his seat in Congress or drop his re-election bid. But if he were to do so, a number of electoral processes would be set in motion to replace him.
If Kean were to vacate his seat in Congress, Sherrill would be able to call a special election for a replacement to serve through the rest of this year.
His team assures me that he's not coming off the ballot, that he's fine.
If Kean ended his re-election campaign, the process to replace him on the ballot would depend on timing. He is unopposed in the June primary, so if he were to exit the race before then it would be up to a “committee on vacancies.”
Campaign paperwork filed with the state Division of Elections and obtained by Gothamist through a public records request indicate that Kean selected Neely as well as top advisers Dan Scharfenberg and Kean MacLelland to serve as his committee on vacancies.
If Kean exited the race later in the summer, the local Republican parties in each of the district’s six counties would select a candidate to replace him on the ballot.
Carlos Santos, chair of the Union County Republican Committee, and Joe LaBarbera, chair of the Sussex County Republican Committee, both said they’re in regular contact with Kean’s team. Both said they’ve not been making contingency plans because they’ve been given no indication that Kean is considering leaving the race.
“His team assures me that he's not coming off the ballot, that he's fine,” LaBarbera said. “I am not going to plan. I think it would be a betrayal of all the loyalty he's shown us. It would be a betrayal for us to go down that road. So I would never go down that road unless I got a heads up from his team if that was going to be the case.”
Mike Hayes contributed reporting.
