With Congress home for a weeklong recess, senators and representatives of both parties – but especially Republicans – are feeling the heat from their constituents on President Donald Trump, government funding, Medicaid, and more. And New Jersey Senator Andy Kim is bringing the pressure directly to New Jersey’s three Republican congressmen: by holding town halls in their own districts.
Kim will be in Egg Harbor City in Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis)’s district on Thursday, March 20; in Branchburg in Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield)’s district on Friday, March 21; and in Brick in Rep. Chris Smith (R-Manchester)’s district on Saturday, March 22 for in-person town hall events. While Kim of course represents all three towns as a member of the U.S. Senate, his choice of locations is a very deliberate one.
“As Congress prepares to negotiate a hyper-partisan Republican reconciliation package that threatens to cut Medicaid, education funding, and other critical support for working people, Senator Kim will outline what’s at stake and hear from New Jerseyans on what they want him to bring back to Capitol Hill and fight for to ensure that New Jersey families’ priorities are put first,” Kim’s office said in a statement on the events, the first in-person town halls he’s holding as a U.S. Senator.
The subject of in-person town halls – long a political football, especially in the lead-up to a midterm election – has come back into the limelight in the wake of Trump’s return to the White House and his efforts to dismantle major parts of the federal bureaucracy. Republicans who held town hall events early in this congressional session often got an earful from constituents, and the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) went so far as to advise House Republicans not to hold in-person town halls at all.
That advice prompted a number of notable Democrats, from Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to California Rep. Ro Khanna, to pointedly hold town halls in Republican districts and knock local representatives for not doing so. Kim is the latest Democratic politician to join the trend.
But the choice by Kean, Smith, and Van Drew not to hold traditional town halls – in-person, widely publicized events where anyone can show up and be given the opportunity to ask questions – predates anything the NRCC told them to do. All three have generally declined to host that type of town hall event, saying that other ways of reaching their constituents are far more effective and far less likely to be hijacked by small groups of committed activists.
One alternative is tele-town halls, in which constituents can listen in as the member of Congress answers questions sent to them in advance. That’s what Van Drew has been doing since the Covid pandemic, and he said at his most recent tele-town hall last week that he believes it to be a far better way to reach constituents in his geographically sprawling South Jersey district.
“It’s really tough to have an in-person event that truly works for everyone. People here are spread out all over South Jersey,” Van Drew said.
“Let’s be honest, sometimes in-person meetings were getting a bit out of hand,” Van Drew added. “They were misused. They became political. You get the same few people who just want to argue, want to be mean, want to complain, and want to intimidate others, and they don’t really want to ask questions. But the tele-town halls, it’s different. People don’t feel that intimidation. They’re not scared. They’re not pressured. They can ask whatever is on their minds.”
Smith similarly has decided not to hold in-person town halls for many years, for the reason that he believed they were becoming more about gotcha moments than productive conversations. He said in 2018, when Republicans were facing a wave of angry anti-Trump constituents similar to today, that he was reluctant to “meet with people who continually are acting in a totally uncivil way.”
As for Kean, the congressman has held a number of telephone town halls during his two years in the House, with another coming up on March 26, and he also points to veteran- and senior-focused events he’s held in the past.
But for many activists and constituents – especially in Kean’s highly competitive 7th district, which is likely to be a top Democratic target in 2026 – that hasn’t been good enough. Last Friday, Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-Ringoes), who was defeated for re-election by Kean in 2022, held a town hall in Summit “since our current representative remains AWOL”; both of Kean’s declared Democratic opponents, former Summit Councilman Greg Vartan and former Navy helicopter pilot Rebecca Bennett, were in attendance.
And last night, Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) attended a constituent-hosted town hall in Pleasantville, in the heart of Van Drew’s district, focused on potential cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security; Van Drew declined to attend. Watson Coleman had previously offered to travel to Van Drew’s, Kean’s, and Smith’s districts “to help them explain their vote [on the House GOP’s budget resolution] to their constituents.”
New Jersey’s congressional Democrats, too, have different attitudes when it comes to town halls. Reps. Donald Norcross (D-Camden) and Herb Conaway (D-Delran) have both already held in-person town halls this congressional session, and Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark) will hold one this Friday; others, among them Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch) and Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly), have typically stuck with virtual events instead. (The Bergen Record published a full rundown of the state delegation’s town hall plans last week.)
Few members, though, have quite as prolific of a town hall record as Kim. In the six years since he first arrived in the House in 2019, Kim has held 83 town halls, a mix of both in-person and telephone events; the three town halls coming up later this week will mark numbers 84, 85, and 86.
