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| Andy Kim celebrates his historic election victory last Nov. 4. |
New Jersey's Congressmember Andy Kim, a Democrat, will be moving from the House of Representatives to the Senate, making history as the first Korean American in the Senate.
Kim defeated his Republican opponent, hotelier Curtis Bashaw, in the November election.
Kim overcame the establishment politicala power-brokers as an outsider even though he was born in Boston and raised in south New Jersey.
“I have every bit as much right to represent the state as anybody else,” Kim said. “I am as American as anybody else.”
The outsider role actually worked in his favor as voters wanted change from the political machine that ran state politics.
The Senate seat opened up when incumbent Bob Menendez was convicted in July for taking bribes from Turkey in exchange for official acts favoring that country.
“Last year, when I first started running for Senate, I had somebody literally tell me to my face that I’m the ‘wrong kind of minority to win statewide,’” Kim told NBC News. “That was really hurtful.”
Kim gained national attention after the Jan. 6 insurrection attempt by Donald Trump followers. A picture of him picking up debris in the Capitol left by the would-be insurrectionists went viral.
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| A photo of New Jersey's Rep. Andy Kim cleaning up after the Jan. 6 insurrection went viral |
Kim will be joining two other Asian Americans in the Senate: Hawaii's Mazie Hirono and Illinois' Tammy Duckworth.
He hopes that his election will give a voice to Asian Americans who have traditionally been neglected by government.
“We live in a time of such great distrust in government, and I really do think that that poses a deep, deep concern and threat to our society,” Kim told NBC. “That’s a big reason why I stepped up to run for Senate, jumped in the day after the indictment of the senator, because I felt like we needed to change course.”
Kim added that there’s a “hunger for a new, younger generation of leadership to step up.”
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