The memory of high-road Kean competes with low-road tactics in Central NJ I Stile – NorthJersey.com

A fulsome endorsement from one of New Jersey’s most beloved politicians is an incalculable benefit, especially in an election when President Donald Trump’s record and character are on the ballot.

And it certainly helps when the pitchman happens to be your father — and that he has the same name.

“He has the common decency and the respect for public service that we desperately need,” says former Republican Gov. Thomas H. Kean, referring to the candidate, state Sen. Thomas H. Kean Jr., who is running for Congress in the 7th Congressional District in central New Jersey. 

There is little doubt that the aura of inclusiveness and moderation during the popular former governor’s eight-year reign in the boom years of the 1980s is attractive in today’s political climate. Nostalgia for the father has helped make the son’s effort to unseat first-term incumbent Tom Malinowski, D-Ringoes, competitive. 

Yet, the endorsement ad, featuring homespun images of the two Keans watching a dog fetch a stick in an autumnal setting, doesn’t wipe away a GOP toxic smear that falsely depicted Malinowski as a protector of sexual predators.

The disputed ad, produced by the national Republican Party’s political arm and embraced by the Kean campaign, aligns the veteran moderate state senator with some of the acid-bath campaign tactics seen in recent New Jersey campaigns.

“This is going to be a very tight race,” said Ben Dworkin, director of the Rowan Institute for Public Policy & Citizenship. “But that direction in negative advertising seemed incongruous with the better-angels appeal [for which] the Kean brand is often remembered.”

Kean officials dismiss that concern and say their candidate, the Republican leader of the state Senate since 2008, has a long-established reputation as a bi-partisan bridge builder. They say Kean Jr. has amassed relationships and accomplishments in New Jersey while Malinowski was climbing the ranks in Washington, D.C.

“This is a campaign that New Jersey believes in because it has been about bringing people together,” said spokesman Harrison Neely in a statement. “Congress is broken and we need more leaders in Washington who will put public service before politics.”

The National Republican Campaign Committee ad takes aim at Malinowski’s role as the director of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch, an international advocacy group that condemns and lobbies against human rights abuses. The group won a Nobel Prize in 1997 for its efforts in establishing an international ban for landmines. Malinowski joined the group four years later.

The ad features an ominous, hooded man staring into apartment window at night, as a female voice says Malinowski “tried to make it easier for predators to hide in the shadows” during his tenure at Human Rights Watch from 2001 to 2013.

The Republican ad cites as evidence the group’s 2006 report of its lobbying activities, which included a lengthy list of issues the group opposed or supported that year, including “sex offender legislation” that was part of an omnibus crime bill the group opposed. Malinowski’s name was listed in the report as a lobbyist.

But former and current Human Rights Watch officials say the listing of Malinowski’s name is a bureaucratic formality that doesn’t reflect the reality of how the office conducted its lobbying. Jennifer Daskal, who was also a Human Rights lobbyist, said she was responsible for domestic affairs legislation, including the crime bill. 

Malinowski’s focus was on international affairs, she said in a recent interview.

“Our roles were very distinct,” said Daskal, now an associate law professor at American University. “He was not involved in what we were advocating.” 

Still, Kean has argued that, as director of the office at the time, Malinowski bore managerial responsibility for the group’s overall lobbying decisions.

“Why didn’t he stop it?” Kean asked in a recent debate Malinowski sponsored by the New Jersey Globe, a political website. “But the real question is how in the world can you work for an organization that advocates against protecting children?”

Malinowski and his allies say that’s a “reckless” distortion of the group’s position on the issue.

They said Human Rights Watch did not oppose the registry, but sought to strike a more equitable balance between punishment and public notification — an issue that New Jersey grappled with in the 1990s during creation of its landmark “Megan’s Law” sex offender law.

Human Rights Watch raised objections to the harsher provisions of the proposed law, such as a lifetime registration for more serious offenders, even after they completed their sentences, and a 20-year requirement for those charged with low-level or misdemeanor offenses, such as urination in public.

“Registration requirements put these individuals at risk of retaliation and discrimination and make it extremely difficult for these individuals to find employment, housing, and to rebuild their lives,” Daskal wrote.

Daskal called Republicans’ attempts to depict Malinowski as a “violent, pedophile-loving candidate” as “desperate.”

“Tom spent his career protecting the rights of innocent victims,” she said.

Malinowski’s campaign also suspects that Kean and the GOP are attempting to tap a “dark current” in the GOP base — namely shadowy conspiracy theorists who believe that Trump was recruited by generals in 2016 to destroy a Satan-worshipping cabal that runs a sex-trafficking ring that extends from the “deep state” of the U.S. government to Hollywood.

Malinowski was a chief sponsor of a resolution condemning QAnon conspiracies, which passed the House earlier this month. But Malinowski’s Washington office received death threats after an internet site used by QAnon posted a copy of his resolution and a NRCC press release accusing him of lobbying to protect sex offenders, he said in an interview.

“This is why people are so turned off by politics in this country, especially young people. You got campaigns out there willing to say absolutely anything,” Malinowski said in the debate.

“And we know who the model for that kind of politics is right now,” he said, alluding to Trump.

At least one Kean defender said it would be an absurd notion for the NRCC to waste  millions of dollars trying to pander to a fringe group in one of the more affluent, highly educated districts in the country, which includes all of Hunterdon County and parts of Warren, Essex, Somerset, Morris and Union counties.

And Neely, for his part, said Kean has denounced QAnon. 

“Tom absolutely rejects QAnon and has a long history of standing up against anti-Semitism in New Jersey,” he said to Politico earlier this month.

Still, the ad appears to have a larger strategic aim. In a district where anti-Trump sentiment runs high — and which swept Malinowski into office in 2018 — the ad shifts the debate away from Kean running on the ticket with Trump.

It’s a much more preferable discussion over Malinowski’s days working for a “radical” Washington, D.C., group, even if the ad that raises the issue has largely been debunked.

And in the closing days, Kean Jr. wants voters to view him as a Republican in his father’s moderate, patrician style.

“Something is wrong with our politics,” the elder Kean begins in his 30-second spot, entitled “Common ground.”

Yet, as much as much as the ex-governor burnished the above-the-fray “politics of inclusion” in the era of Ronald Reagan, his son is brandishing the politics of fear in the era of Trump.

Charlie Stile is New Jersey’s preeminent political columnist. For unlimited access to his unique insights into New Jersey’s political power structure and his powerful watchdog work, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: stile@northjersey.com 

Twitter: @politicalstile