N.J. Rep. Andy Kim has to beat an ex-punk rocker turned yacht dealer to serve another term

Bob Healey Jr. walked into the VFW post just off Route 130 last week, where a group of old-school Burlington County Republicans waited to meet him.

The former punk-rock singer turned yacht dealer with millions at his disposal made the rounds, quietly chatting people up with talk about American values and grocery bills, transgender education trends, and kids coming home from school saying “the country was founded in 1619, not 1776,” a reference to the year a group of enslaved people from Africa were brought to Hampton, Va., aboard the White Lion.

These Burlco Republicans have coalesced around Healey, 39, and bottles of Yuengling and Bud Light, in an attempt to unseat two-term incumbent Rep. Andy Kim, 40, a Democrat from Marlton and former security staffer with the Obama administration, in New Jersey’s Third Congressional District.

Dressed down in his plaid shirt and high-tops, cell phone tucked into his back pocket, Healey mingled as televisions above the bar were tuned to Philly news stations broadcasting footage of John Fetterman in a suit.

Healey’s look may not have screamed “congressional candidate with millions of dollars at his disposal” — more, one guy at the bar speculated, like the kid he was when he played (and screamed) in the horror-punk band the Ghouls.

But Healey, a top executive in his family’s Viking Yacht company, based in New Gretna, and also a yoga teacher, has lent his campaign $1.2 million through Sept. 30.

His mother, Ellen Healey, has donated $2 million more through a super PAC, Garden State Advance, to fund television ads against Kim.

One ad, called Madhouse, shows Healey in a bar in an olive T-shirt with caricatures of Washington Democrats awkwardly dancing and playing drums behind him, with people giving out merch T-shirts printed with some of his positions (”Cutting spending to fight inflation”).

“While my mosh-pit days are behind me, I still know how to throw an elbow to get things done,” Healey says, before pulling the proverbial plug (to stop the madness).

But Kim, on his third campaign, also knows how to throw an elbow, though nationally, he’s known more for quietly helping to clean up debris in the Capitol on the day after Jan. 6. The suit he wore that day is in the Smithsonian.

“I never had an opponent ask his mom to give $2 million to his campaign in an effort to help him get a job,” Kim said in a phone interview, conducted as he was driving back from a small business roundtable at the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, which now straddles the 3d District in Burlington County and the 4th in Ocean.

This is the third time Kim has gone up against a multimillionaire self-funding candidate, having beaten incumbent Rep. Tom MacArthur in 2018 and businessman David Richter in 2020.

He’s raised more than $6 million through Sept. 30 and has $3 million in his coffers. And he’s run ads attacking Healey for owning pharmaceutical stocks and trying to protect pharmaceutical profits, contrasting it with his own authorship of the provision included in the Inflation Reduction Act that caps prescription-drug costs for seniors on Medicare to $2,000 a year.

“My mom’s on Social Security,” Kim said in an interview. “Right now families are struggling to pay their bills. Meanwhile, my opponent is throwing a million of his own money, and asking his mom to bail him out. I find that to be fairly out of touch. I never asked my mom to help me get a job.”

Outside the VFW, Healey paused to talk about what he’s hearing in the redrawn district, which includes Burlington County and portions of Monmouth and Mercer Counties. (The district lost Ocean County, home to many Republicans and coastal retirees.)

“People are talking about three things,” Healey said. “What are you going to do about my gas and groceries? I’m concerned about safety in my own neighborhood, and ‘Do you know what they’re teaching my kids at school?’”

Kim, who has held 56 town halls and serves on the Small Business, Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees, said people are expressing a “general sense of whiplash and uncertainty,” and a desire for “a steady hand on the wheel.”

“They’re talking about the anxieties they have in their lives right now, from a lot of different sources,” Kim said. “They don’t feel like our politics is listening to them. All they see is tribal competition between two parties. And they’re tired of that. I’m tired of that too.”

Healey has campaigned thigh-deep in cranberry bogs and slicked his hair back for a Grease Lightning-themed event. Kim’s been at the country’s oldest pizzeria (Papa’s Tomato Pies in Robbinsville) and at the Sri Guruvaayoorappan Temple in Morganville — and also with his family in the upper decks of Citizens Bank Park.

With all the money being spent, the campaign is playing out on television as much as anywhere.

In one ad, Kim says Healey wants to protect his investment in pharmaceutical stocks and for looking out for his own interests. “Bob sells yachts, so Bob wants to cut taxes for multimillionaires like himself, including yacht taxes.”

In another, Jenniffer Hernandez, a Navy veteran and stroke survivor, attacks Healey’s position on abortion rights, citing a primary debate where Healey called New Jersey’s laws protecting a woman’s right to an abortion “unfortunate.”

On his website, Healey says he supports “a culture of life,” but believes abortion should be legal in cases of rape, incest, and when the life of the mother is at risk, and that “people of goodwill can find common ground on legal abortions in the first trimester.”

In his latest ad, Healey says Kim reneged on a promise to be bipartisan.

Healey said that Kim does not understand the damage a luxury tax hike did to the boat industry and noted Viking employs 1,600 people. His late father, Robert Healey Sr., waged a successful fight against that tax.

“I’ve been a boat builder my entire life,” Healey said. “He seems to forget there was a horrible tax back here in the 1990s that destroyed an industry across the country and put a lot of hardworking people out of work.”

“It’s not just about his business,” Kim responded, noting he has proposed easing tax burdens for community banks to boost their small business lending. “It’s about all our businesses. The issues he’s trying to push forward on would be so damaging. My opponent opposed the bipartisan infrastructure law. How crazy is that?“

At the VFW, there was a lot of local politics in the room.

There was Bob Gilbert, 70, a Vietnam veteran running for Delran Town Council, talking about local flooding and difficulty getting campaign signs.

Ralph Hagan, long active in local Republican politics, said he thinks “the independent vote that surprised [former State Senate President] Steve Sweeney” could come out for Healey.

Gerry Clauss, the deputy mayor of Hainesport, said he objected to Kim’s voting “lockstep with Joe Biden,” and said people in the district, moderates in both parties, “see the writing on the wall.”

Frank Sommer, of Riverside, recounted he “went all in” for Donald Trump, and said, “Good or bad or indifferent, he did a lot for this country.” He said he liked everything about Healey, beginning with “He’s a Republican.”

“If you’ve got a 401(k), forget it, it’s down the tubes now,” Sommer said. Looking over at Healey from across the bar, he noted, “He dresses like he did 15 years ago, before he got his father’s company, when he was playing in his band.”

The two will debate 9 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 30, on the New Jersey Globe’s Facebook page and YouTube.