Good Friday (literally) morning! With first lady Tammy Murphy’s abrupt exit from the Senate race on Sunday, Rep. Andy Kim is the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic nomination for Senate. New Jersey has not elected a GOP senator since 1972, making the Democratic nominee also the favorite to win the Senate seat this fall. Indicted Sen. Bob Menendez has mulled an independent Senate run if he is “exonerated” from his corruption charges, although it remains to be seen if he will follow through. In just a few weeks, Kim went from underdog to likely being the state’s next senator. We caught up with him over the phone for his perspective on what happened and what’s next. Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You pulled off a huge and unlikely feat with Tammy Murphy exiting the Senate race to replace Bob Menendez. You announced in September that you were running on an impulse, you lagged Murphy in fundraising and didn't have the party support that’s typically needed for a primary victory in the state. How do you assess what happened and why? When you laid it all out that way, it's quite a daunting task. And it was certainly something that I recognized was difficult. I had people telling me in November when the first lady jumped in that I should drop out in the race, go back to running for reelection in the House. But I felt strongly about why I was in this race and what I could offer and about this mission of giving the people of New Jersey a choice. I wanted to follow through on that. It became a different race than I initially set out to fight. When we saw what happened with the first lady jumping in and the party leadership coming behind her, I did what I've done in my previous races, which is just go and try to meet as many people as possible as quickly as possible. And it started to just kind of generate some energy. I could see the response, I could see how every event that we did, would have offers from five to 10 more people saying that they wanted to help with the next one. And it just snowballed. And by mid-December, I just remember telling my team there's something going on here. There's something happening here in New Jersey. You had mentioned that this became a different race than what you initially set out to fight. What exactly do you mean by that? I made a very quick decision, it was probably the boldest and fastest career decision I've ever made in my life. I was prepared to take on an incumbent which, theoretically, I could still have if he runs as an independent. But it takes on a different experience when you have somebody else jumping in, especially someone with the profile of the first lady. That's a different experience in terms of going up against the most powerful political family in the state. It's intimidating. Certainly the dynamics made it difficult. Just a lot of people that supported me before, a lot of organizations that supported me before – they either stayed on the sidelines or some of them went towards the First Lady. Many of them told me that the dynamics are just so unique. You’ve now become a symbol of revolt against New Jersey’s politics-as-usual. Do you see the Democratic Party in New Jersey changing, and what role will you play in that going forward? I believe New Jersey politics has already changed. I think that that change was already set into motion by Menendez's indictment. But certainly the Senate primary and how it shaked up have really sustained that and is pushing that forward. First and foremost right now we're continuing the lawsuit [against the county line] and continuing the efforts to try to change this, not just for this 2024 race, but hopefully forever. The county line has certainly been the elephant that got the most attention and rightfully so. It's a major aspect of Jersey politics and it’s for the worse. But it's not the only element that we should be looking at. … How do we try to work to make our democracy here in New Jersey, more inclusive, more participatory, and certainly more fair? What are those other aspects that you're talking about that you would like to change within New Jersey politics, aside from the line? Some of them are more general ones. There was a lot of attention about transparency, especially about the state level and the [Open Public Record Act] bill, campaign finance issues, other things like that. But I saw a lot during this convention season in terms of just the fact that every single county does things differently. There's no standardization. We saw the difference between secret ballots [county convention endorsement votes] and not having them. There needs to be just much more standardization, much more transparency on that front. And certainly, in my opinion, a lot more participation in those processes. I think we need to kind of see what comes next with whether the line exists or not and hopefully that's something we'll find out about very shortly. Menendez is threatening to run as an independent if he’s “exonerated.” What kind of impact do you think that could have on the race? We'd have to see sort of where his polling is at that point. He's polling in the single digits, at least in the polling that I've seen. Theoretically [he] could play a role that could be a spoiler-type role, if he is independent. I'm a Democrat that won a district Trump won twice. I've been one of the best performing Democrats against Republicans. I feel like if I'm the nominee that comes out from June 4th I'll be in a very strong position regardless of what Menendez does. I hope to be able to have a wide enough margin in terms of my lead that whatever percentage that Menendez might be able to muster is not going to be something that will be an obstacle. TIPS? FEEDBACK? Email me at Dhan@politico.com HAPPY BIRTHDAY — (Saturday, 3/30): Jean Stanfield, Fred Madden, Chris DePhillips, George Gore, Zach Silber, Lance Landgraf. (Sunday, 3/31): Jeff Cantor, Mo Delgado, Andrew Edelson, Christopher Tully, Sue Altman. WHERE’S MURPHY? — Out of state on personal travel with first lady Tammy Murphy. The couple will return to the state Sunday evening. | 
