Against the wishes of his doctors, Rep. Tom Kean (R-NJ) returned to Congress on Tuesday, his first appearance there in more than 100 days.
Addressing the House floor, Kean began by noting that he is a “private person” before explaining his multi-month absence from his duties in Washington, DC.
“Several months ago, due to health concerns, I entered the hospital for some testing,” said the 57-year-old Kean. “I was given the diagnosis of depression.”
It was a stark admission for a politician whose critics have long questioned his absence but were met with silence. Though depression is not disqualifying in and of itself, the lack of transparency from a person who was elected to provide it is worrying. Furthermore, if a disability keeps you off the job for four months, especially a job as important as serving in Congress, then the job likely isn’t compatible with the disability Kean is currently navigating.
More worrying yet is how the rollout of Kean’s diagnosis was handled. Kean gave his speech to a largely empty House chamber, then breezed past CNN’s Manu Raju as the reporter peppered him with questions after four months of silence. Kean has also yet to hold the kind of press conference his absence warrants, one which would allow the Congressman to address questions regarding the current state of his recovery or the treatment plan given to address his diagnosis.
In the nearly four months since he stood before the public, Kean had reported expenses for personal travel in San Francisco and staff travel in Las Vegas. He also submitted his personal stock trading activity. But as the weeks turned into months, and with little details provided by staff members, questions arose as to the whereabouts and condition of the U.S. representative for New Jersey’s 7th congressional district.
Though Kean has framed his return as an act of courage, a man who had time to file expense reports and disclose stock trades but not to answer a single question about his condition is not a man who is simply managing an illness, but one who is more concerned with managing his image. Furthermore, both Kean and his staffers chose silence over a press release, statement, or a single tweet that could have addressed the issue directly.
Speaking with reporters outside Congress on Tuesday, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) refused to apologize for what she characterized as fair criticism of her Republican colleague. “I think not showing up for work is discounting the voters,” Boebert told TMZ. “That’s literally taxation without representation. It’s awful. We were elected to be here to work, and it’s unacceptable.”
And then there’s Kean’s voting record on paid sick leave. During his time in Congress, he has repeatedly voted against the sort of relief he was granted as a member of Congress. In 2018, Kean, then a member of the New Jersey Senate, voted against the Earned Sick Leave Act, a piece of legislation that mandated five paid sick leave days per year for New Jersey workers. “He’s been able to rely on things he directly voted against,” said Yarrow Willman-Cole, a member of the nonprofit New Jersey Citizen Action, the group who organized the legislation.
But despite Kean’s failure to support legislation that would’ve provided New Jersey workers with protections similar to the ones he took advantage of as a member of Congress, other congressional colleagues were sympathetic to Kean’s condition. Responding to Boebert’s claims that Kean took off four months from work because he was “sad,” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) suggested the high-octane representative from Colorado should “educate herself about mental health.”
“Depression is not an emotion, it’s a condition,” Torres told TMZ. “You should no more blame someone for their depression than you would blame a diabetic for the inability to generate insulin. It’s a condition beyond their control. When someone comes out as struggling with depression, the proper response is empathy and sympathy, not disdain and dismissiveness.”
Though Torres makes a fair point, it’s not beyond the pale for Boebert and others to point out that across the political spectrum in Congress, several politicians have suffered or are currently suffering from ailments that keep them from performing to the sort of standard expected of federal legislators. Whether it’s Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) freezing on camera or Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) suffering a stroke and being treated for depression in the aftermath, both political parties feature notable examples of lawmakers who have battled debilitating illnesses without resigning to address health concerns.
None of this is an argument that sick people don’t belong in public life. It’s an argument that Congress currently has no real standard for when illness—whether physical or mental—makes the job impossible to do, and lawmakers are left to police themselves, which mostly means they don’t. Kean didn’t create that problem. But his four months of silence, followed by a return with no real accounting for them, is exactly the kind of case that should force the question: not whether depression disqualifies someone from serving, but whether an institution this important can keep functioning on the honor system.
Until Congress builds something better, the least voters can ask of Kean and others is the transparency he’s so far refused to give them. If he can’t offer that, he should do the honorable thing and step down.
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