I mysteriously didn’t show up for work once for three straight months, but am still getting a great performance review from Donald Trump
By 
Who am I?
I’m a member of Congress who hasn’t been seen or heard from since the beginning of March, which means I’ve missed more than 100 floor votes at this point, including one on legislation I sponsored. Nobody knows where I am or what I am doing (kind of like the Druids), but my staff claims I’m dealing with some unspecified “medical issue.”
Beginning in April, a Times reporter visited Mr. Kean’s primary residence in Westfield, N.J., several times. Some neighbors said they had not seen Mr. Kean or noticed any changes at the house. All declined to be quoted. A knock on Mr. Kean’s door went unanswered.
Hey maybe he’s at one of his various vacation estates I mean homes:
Digging into Mr. Kean’s disclosures from when he was a state senator, a reporter found the address of Mr. Kean’s vacation home in Bay Head, N.J., an exclusive community on the Jersey Shore where Bruce Springsteen also has a home. In May, she paid the house a visit. Advertising fliers were stuck in the front door. There was also a note left in April advising residents to move their cars. It seemed that no one had visited the home for some time.
Mr. Kean also owns a stake in his family’s estate on Fishers Island, N.Y., off the Connecticut coast of Long Island Sound. Like most homes of the largest homes on the island, the Kean estate sits on a private road behind a staffed guard gate. Pedestrians may walk past the gate, but only residents and their guests are allowed to drive on the eastern part of the island. Reporters arrived by ferry and interviewed people in the island’s public areas, determining that Mr. Kean had not been seen there.
If Kean’s name is vaguely familiar in LGM land, this is why:
His great-grandfather was a senator, his grandfather served in the House and his father, with whom he shares a name, was a popular former governor known for his moderate views while in the State House from 1982 to 1990. Kean University in North Jersey is named for the family.
This is not a matter of idle curiosity, as Kean’s seat is ripe for the picking:
Mr. Kean was elected to the House in 2022, ousting a two-term Democrat, after the largely suburban district was reconfigured to include more Republican-leaning towns; he was re-elected in 2024 by about five percentage points.
Voters in the district supported Mr. Trump in 2024 by a small margin, but the president’s popularity in New Jersey has waned. In November, Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, beat her Republican opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, by nearly 15 points after a campaign that focused heavily on attacking Mr. Trump. In Mr. Kean’s district, Ms. Sherrill outperformed Mr. Ciattarelli by about two percentage points.
Then, last week in a special House election, Analilia Mejia, a progressive Democrat, trounced her Republican opponent by 20 percentage points in a district adjacent to Mr. Kean’s.
Democratic members of Congress are naturally responding to this situation with the ruthlessness which the present situation — nascent fascism — requires:
“We may not always agree, but he’s a good man, and I wish him nothing but the best,” said Representative Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat who has worked closely with Mr. Kean as a fellow member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.
Nobody who supports Donald Trump is a “good man,” and being a member of the Republican party in 2026 means you support Donald Trump, so this doesn’t seem like the world’s most challenging syllogism, but I’m not Josh Gottheimer. Don’t worry, though, Trump says Kean has been “working tirelessly,” which given Donald Trump’s definition of working might well be true.
How about at least noting that, thanks primarily to Kean’s party, we continue to live in a country where the vast majority of workers can be fired for any reason or no reason at any time, let alone for a really great reason, like not showing up to work for three straight months while providing no explanation to one’s employer?
Today is Day Two of our annual fundraiser; if you haven’t yet, please donate to LGM so we can continue to work toward True Communism, or failing that, some of the minimal employment rights that Kean’s party continues to do everything possible to oppose, even though he himself is a great guy, which you would know if you had ever hung out with him on one of his family’s estates.
Links to help subsidize yet more class warfare: