Rep. Andy Kim’s Blue Suit and the Smithsonian
The Hope Diamond long has been the star of the nation’s foremost museum collection. But for many of us, it’s been outshone by a recent acquisition, one that could be called the Hope Suit.
July 12 is the birthday of Rep. Andy Kim, a moderate Democrat from New Jersey.
You may not know much about Kim. You may only know the famous image of Kim. It’s the one of the congressman cleaning up the mess left by violent rioters who attacked police officers who were trying to end our American democracy on Jan. 6, 2021.
The Smithsonian Institution asked Kim to donate the blue J. Crew suit he wore that day.
Or you may never have heard of Kim at all.
The images more commonly associated with the Jan. 6 riots have fallen into two categories, heartbreaking and disgusting. There are the sad photos of rioters attacking police officers. And there are disgusting photos of rioters looting in the Capitol and that attention-hungry guy in the horns.
There’s another reason you have not have heard of Kim.
He is among a key group of Democratic House newcomers who have been overshadowed by more liberal members in terms of press coverage. Many Americans know the names of more left-wing members of Congress who won their seats in 2018. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the most famous of them.
Too many people confuse media prominence with political importance. Ocasio-Cortez brought to Congress great energy and a commitment to fighting climate change and defending the poor. But her 2018 victory over fellow Democrat Joe Crowley in the primary didn’t make any difference in terms of control of the House. Her victory simply traded one Democrat for another.
It was Andy Kim and other moderates like Rep. Val Demings of Florida who gave Democrats control of the House. In 2016, Demings, a former police chief, won a seat formerly held by a Republican. That raised the number of House seats held by Democrats from 188 to 194. In 2018, Democrats picked up 41 seats, including the one Kim won in New Jersey. That brought their total to 235 of the 435 seats, giving Democrats control of the House.
Those Democratic victories are the reason why there have been serious House hearings and floor votes on issues such as climate change and gun violence in recent years.
Ocasio-Cortez did a brave thing in challenging Crowley, a high-ranking Democrat in the House, in the 2018 primary to win the seat in New York’s 14th District.
But that seat was going to be held by a Democrat, no matter what. Crowley last won it with more than 70 percent of the vote, and Ocasio-Cortez has had more than 70 percent of the vote in her 2018 and 2020 wins.
If Teddy Roosevelt came back from the dead and ran in New York’s 14th District as a corporation-fighting Republican with a serious track for conservation, any Democratic candidate would beat him.
I grew up in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. I can tell you that a ballot that listed “a Democratic to be named at a later time” versus Roosevelt would still result in a defeat for the Republican. That’s true even for one like Roosevelt who gave us the Food and Drug Administration and many of our national parks.
If Ocasio-Cortez had won and Kim and the other moderates had not, the Bronx congresswoman would not have had the opportunities she has had to seek to win public support for the Green New Deal. That would have been just another bill introduced by a member of the minority party. A bill that doesn’t get a hearing really has little more importance than a press release.
Control of the House means control of the agenda. Control of the House is key to shaping national discussion and dialogue. It’s about deciding which issues are worthy at least of serious debate, which can prove to be the groundwork for future major legislation. (Update here on Aug.14, without Kim and the other Democrats who flipped seats, the Inflation Reduction Act would not have been enacted. This law contains some of the most significant changes made in years in health and climate policy.)
Tough Battle
Andy Kim represents New Jersey’s 3rd congressional district. The district looks like a bow-tie the first time a teenager tries to wear one, shaped district running across the width of the state. It starts close to Philadelphia suburbs on the Delaware River and reaches east to the Jersey Shore.
My mother lives in what now is Kim’s district, although redistricting will move her to a new one in 2023. My mom volunteered for the Obama-Biden campaigns. As a former counselor for victims of domestic violence, my mom was a fan of Joe Biden long before he reached the White House. One of Biden’s biggest accomplishments in the Senate was the passage in 1994 of the Violence Against Women Act.
My mother just moved a few miles to a new home, but she’s still temporarily in Kim’s district. I’m glad she moved. One of her former neighbors was one of the Americans who unfortunately is mired in rage. My mom used to lived in a small house in a development on the Barnegat Bay. When you stepped out the front door of that house, you were greeted by the sight of the neighbor’s flag on a pole across a small lagoon. The flag had an expletive and Biden’s name.
I’m a registered independent. I reported for 10 years from Capitol Hill for a wonderful nonpartisan publication. There are good people in both of our major political parties.
But hear me.
If you are watching tv shows that get you so wound up that you raise a flag with an obscenity and the name of the president of your country, you need to stop and reconsider things.
I mention this story about my mom and her former neighbor to show that New Jersey’s 3rd District is more varied politically than New York’s 14th. It’s certainly more of a challenge for a Democrat.
It calls for someone like Kim. On his website, Kim describes as having previously worked “as a career public servant under both Democrats and Republicans.” Before winning a seat in Congress, Kim worked at the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House National Security Council, and in Afghanistan as an advisor to Generals Petraeus and Allen.
Kim’s most recently introduced bills have focused on aiding members of the military and their families.
Kim won his 2018 election with 50 percent of the vote, defeating a Republican congressman, Tom MacArthur, who had 49 percent of the vote. MacArthur served only four years, or two terms, in the House.
MacArthur is best known for his intense commitment to rolling back a part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act that actually has deep bipartisan support.
Before the Affordable Care Act passed, people lived in fear that they could be cut off from medical insurance just when they needed it most. Even if you paid for insurance all of your working years, insurers could drop you if you developed a serious or chronic illness before the Affordable Care Act passed. A former insurance executive, MacArthur pitched the idea of ending the Affordable Care Act’s guarantee of coverage and creating special high-risk pools for people in need of medical care. While a boon for insurance companies, this approach has failed consumers before, as health policy advocates pointed out. A lack of support from his fellow Republicans killed MacArthur’s dream.
That was the national legacy of the 3rd District under MacArthur — a bid to end the guarantee of medical insurance for people who need it most and shift them into potentially unreliable high-risk pools.
Under Kim, the 3rd District’s national legacy is an act that brought tremendous comfort to many of us in the dark days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Associated Press photographer Andrew Harnik took a few shots of Kim helping police officers clean up in the Capitol Rotunda.
In a Jan. 7 story by Mike Catalini of the Associated Press, Kim said he visited the Capitol rotunda shortly after voting to certify Biden’s victory. The rotunda is the round circular room at the heart of the Capitol. Kim saw police officers putting pizza boxes in trash bags, so he asked for one, too, and began cleaning up, according to the AP story.
Catalini’s story quoted New Jersey Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski speaking about spotting Kim: ‘There were a couple National Guardsman and I noticed somebody on his hands and knees leaning under a bench to pick something up and it was Andy all by himself, just quietly removing debris and putting it in a plastic bag. He was clearly not doing it for an audience’.”
In this story, Catalini also quotes Kim directly.
“When you see something you love that’s broken you want to fix it,” Kim told AP’s Catalini. “I love the Capitol. I‘m honored to be there…This building is extraordinary and the rotunda in particular is just awe-inspiring. How many countless generations have been inspired in that room?”
Kim’s far from alone in his love of the U.S. Capitol.
Many news outlets reported this week that former House Speaker Paul Ryan sobbed as he watched the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol unfold on television. This is a detail from a new book from journalist Mark Leibovich. A CNN story included an excerpt of the book that quoted Ryan, a Republican who worked for about two decades in Congress.
“I spent my whole adult life in that building,” Ryan says in the CNN story. “And I saw my friends, a lot of cops, some of my old security detail — I’m still friends with a bunch of those guys. It really disturbed me, foundationally.”
I’d guess that many, if not most, of the people who have worked in the Capitol cried the day of the attack. I know I did.
You can spend years working in the Capitol and never lose a sense of awe. As reporter based mostly on the Hill for many years, I’d often pause in the rotunda on my trips between the House and Senate sides of the Capitol. I’d look up at a ceiling fresco of frankly middling quality that has a pagan theme, showing the Apotheosis of George Washington. Our first president sits among the gods, still watching over the country.
Hope Diamond, Hope Suit
On July 6, 2021, Rep. Kim told via Twitter the story of the Smithsonian’s request for the suit he wore while cleaning in the rotunda.
The Smithsonian Institution is a marvel of a museum network. Its website says it owns about 155 million objects, works of art and specimens, of which nearly 146 million are held by the National Museum of Natural History. The National Museum of Natural History houses the most famous object in the Smithsonian’s collection, the Hope Diamond, a deep-blue gem.
I’m much happier that the Smithsonian now has in its collection what I would call the Hope Suit, the J. Crew one Kim wore while cleaning up in the rotunda.
Pasted in below are screenshots of tweets Kim posted last year to tell the story of that donation. Or you can click here to find the thread. Consider retweeting it if you do.
