WASHINGTON — In the years after Rep. Tom Kean Jr. was first sworn to the House in January 2023, he missed a handful of potential roll calls among hundreds in the chamber.
In his unexplained hiatus from Capitol Hill of nearly four months, Kean missed more than 140 votes, placing him statistically near the bottom of the congressional voting pile.
Kean has participated in 37.17% of voting chances in the 119th Congress, according to data collected by CQ Roll Call, a newsroom that covers Capitol Hill. Only former members Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Doug LaMalfa, who represented California, have voted less. Greene resigned in January, the same month LaMalfa died.
Kean, 57, is expected to return to the Capitol on Tuesday and explain his absence, a burning question that has caromed the corridors of Congress, across the lips of aides, reporters, members and political watchers alike and into the American mainstream. Kean’s spokespeople have said he is recovering from a “personal medical issue.”
“He’ll be returning to a full schedule,” Harrison Neely, a political spokesman for Kean, told NJ Spotlight News in mid-June.
Major votes
In his absence, lawmakers in Washington were briefed and voted on ending President Donald Trump’s military operations against Iran, which started Feb. 28, a week before Kean’s last vote on March 5.
Congress debated war with Venezuela and Lebanon and military incursions in Cuba and Mexico. Lawmakers proposed and started drafting the federal budget bill, the annual military policy bill and popular but stalled housing legislation.
Kean missed voting on a $70 billion funding package for the Trump administration’s mass deportation crackdown. Congress passed that legislation in party-line votes, in the Senate and House, in early June, after months of Democratic-led efforts to reform the policies of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol agents.
The funding that bill provided was in addition to the roughly $170 billion Congress allocadted to federal immigration agencies under a 2025 law, which passed only with Republican votes.
And Kean missed voting on a labor-rights measure that Rep. Donald Norcross (D-NJ) shepherded to a floor vote this month. Every House member from New Jersey voted “aye” on that bill.
Missing candidate
Kean, unopposed within his party, won his June 2 primary election, though he had not been seen in months. In the November midterms he will face Rebecca Bennett, a Democrat and former military helicopter pilot who has not held elected office.
Kean’s absence stirred historical comparisons with members of Congress who suffered strokes while in office, joined the Confederate military or died in plane crashes yet were subsequently reelected.
Since March, Kean and his staff have sought to inject an active appearance into his congressional office by inserting written speeches into the Congress Record, sending out publicly-funded email messages and releasing social-media posts about previous events.
“Recently, I visited the Warren Township Police Department to deliver a $900,000 check to local officials and law enforcement officers,” Kean wrote in an emailed message on March 26.
Kean’s office had already touted that funding — on Feb. 21, a month prior.
