New Jersey Rep. Tom Kean returned to Congress on Tuesday after an almost four-month absence from the lower chamber, revealing that he had been diagnosed with depression and spent an extended period in the hospital receiving treatment.
“When people hear the word depression, many people think simply feel it means feeling sad, but depression is so much more than that,” the Republican representative said in remarks on the floor of the House. “It is physical, it is emotional, and until you experience it yourself, it is difficult to fully understand how powerful this illness can be.”
Kean has missed more than 140 votes since he was last in the House on March 5. He and his office had previously offered scant information about the reason for his prolonged absence, attributing it to an undisclosed medical condition and saying more than once over the past couple months that he would soon be back at work. The lack of further detail spurred growing frustration and questions within Washington, D.C., and his New Jersey district.
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“When I first informed the public that I was dealing with a medical issue, I was still trying to understand what was happening myself,” Kean continued in his Tuesday remarks. “When I said I hope to return in a matter of weeks, I believed it.”
While he hoped to return to his work quickly, he said, “There is no timeline for healing. There is no timeline for recovery, only the work of getting better one day at a time.”
Kean, who is running for a third term, has continued to garner support from Republican leadership despite the mounting frustration surrounding his absence in the narrowly divided House. Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that the New Jersey congressman will be “re-elected easily this fall.”
“He has a health condition as he said. If it were me, I would have been more specific about that, and I encourage him to be. He will be today,” Johnson told reporters shortly before Kean took to the House floor. “It’s not an uncommon kind of condition and ailment that he’s been fighting, and I think people resonate with it.”
President Donald Trump also gave Kean a “Complete and Total Endorsement” earlier this month on Truth Social, calling him a “Great Representative for the People of New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District” and “Tremendous Advocate of our America First Agenda” ahead of the state’s primary elections.
Democrats, meanwhile, planned to target Kean’s competitive district, which Trump won by just one point in 2024, in the midterms, even before his absence, and Democratic candidates for the seat increasingly honed in on his absence during his time away.
“I sincerely wish him well. I hope he has a good recovery. But he’s absolutely failed this district, so we’re going to hold him accountable for his voting record,” former Navy pilot Rebecca Bennett, who won the Democratic primary to take on Kean in November, said in an interview with Politico earlier this month. She pointed to the congressman’s vote in favor of Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which helped get the sweeping tax and spending package across the finish line in a narrow 218-214 House vote.
Bennett told supporters in Bridgewater after her win that she was “coming for” Kean. Addressing him, she said, “You were nowhere to be found when Donald Trump started another forever war in the Middle East. You were nowhere to be found when DHS tried to put an ICE detention facility in Roxbury and you were nowhere to be found when Trump held up the funding for the Gateway Tunnel.”
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