HOBOKEN, New Jersey — Rep. Rob Menendez’s (D-NJ) name was his greatest political asset in his initial House bid. Now, as he seeks reelection for the first time, it may be his biggest liability.
Menendez, elected in 2022 to the Jersey City-area 8th Congressional District, hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing or committed other unforced errors in his first term. His father and namesake is a different matter.
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) was indicted, along with his wife, Nadine Arslanian, in late September.
“Between 2018 and 2022, Senator Menendez and his wife engaged in a corrupt relationship with Wael Hana, Jose Uribe, and Fred Daibes — three New Jersey businessmen who collectively paid hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes, including cash, gold, a Mercedes Benz, and other things of value — in exchange for Senator Menendez agreeing to use his power and influence to protect and enrich those businessmen and to benefit the Government of Egypt,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams charged in a statement.
Sen. Menendez, former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has pleaded not guilty. Still, politically, it sets up an awkward situation for Sen. Menendez and his congressman son, a graduate of the University of North Carolina and Rutgers Law School.
Rep. Menendez faces a Democratic primary challenge from Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla in a district that takes up about two-thirds of Hudson County, including several areas that are common shots in movies, television shows, and live news, as the backdrop to the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan’s skyline. In addition to Hoboken, the district takes in about half of Newark, West New York, and Bayonne, plus Weehawken, the site of the 1804 Alexander Hamilton-Aaron Burr duel.
Bhalla, in his Dec. 12 announcement video, talked up public policy matters while trying to connect Rep. Menendez to his father. Bhalla said the nation is “at a pivotal moment,” and he pledged to focus on environmental matters, abortion rights, and healthcare if elected to Congress.
“I believe that America is better than the demagogues who seek to divide us or the politicians who strive only to serve themselves,” Bhalla said to images of both the elder and younger Menendez.
It’s a none-too-subtle reference to the younger Menendez’s political origin story, one of reliance on the influence of political insiders.
“As a lawyer, Menendez was counsel to Lowenstein Sandler, a national law firm, where he served as outside counsel to a wide range of companies and advised on corporate and investment management,” the Almanac of American Politics 2024 says.
“When Rep. Albio Sires announced in December 2021 that he would not seek reelection, The New York Times reported two days later that Menendez had told local political officials that he would run for the seat,” the Almanac of American Politics 2024 adds. “And that ‘powerful political leaders had already begun to coalesce support’ behind him, including Sires.”
RIGHT: This statue bust of Alexander Hamilton was dedicated in 2004 to the Weehawken dueling grounds in Hoboken, New Jersey, where the fateful Hamilton-Burr duel took place.
Menendez won the Democratic nomination and general election with ease. In 2020, now-President Joe Biden would have beaten then-President Donald Trump there 72% to 27%. So, this year, too, winning the Democratic primary is tantamount to claiming the seat in November.
And, as an incumbent, Rep. Menendez holds an advantage going into the June 4 primary. New Jersey’s 8th Congressional District is about 50% Hispanic, the largest percentage of New Jersey’s 12 House districts. It’s about a quarter white, nearly 8% black, with almost 12% Asian American.
The incumbent has tried to carve out his own political identity from his father, who was appointed to the Senate in 2006 and subsequently won election on his own three times. Sen. Menendez was a House member for 13 years before that, in both chambers of the state legislature, mayor of Union City, and at the age of 20, Menendez was elected to the Union City school district’s board of education.
“We’ve dedicated ourselves to this role, and that’s ultimately what we will be judged on,” Rep. Menendez said in a Jan. 26 NJ Spotlight News television interview, citing about 1,100 constituent cases his district and Washington, D.C., offices solved during his first year in Congress. “Anyone that wants to talk about anything else is losing sight of the fact that we’ve gone to work every day since being elected, and that’s what we should be judged on.”
(Alleged) Sins of the Father
Rep. Menendez, though, is running for reelection while his father is a political punching bag by late-night comics and, more to the point, possible Democratic primary challenges. Sen. Menendez hasn’t said if he’ll run again, but Democratic primary opponents already include New Jersey’s first lady, Tammy Murphy (wife of Gov. Phil Murphy), and Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ) of the outer Philadelphia suburbs 3rd Congressional District.
Guilt by association with his father may hurt the congressman in a political environment in which name recognition counts for so much.
Particularly as Sen. Menendez faces trial from the federal charges and political pressure from a neighboring state lawmaker, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA). The freshman senator is his colleague’s most vocal critic in the chamber, much more so than any Republican. Fetterman wants Menendez to resign from the Senate and, short of that happening, is pushing to bar the veteran New Jersey officeholder from receiving classified briefings.
This isn’t the first time Menendez has faced prosecution. A previous corruption trial resulted in a hung jury.
In April 2018, the Senate Ethics Committee “severely admonished” Sen. Menendez for violating “Senate Rules, federal law, and applicable standards of conduct” for accepting many gifts and trips from Salomon Melgen, an eye doctor who was convicted of $73 million in Medicare fraud and acting as his agent. (Trump commuted Melgen’s 17-year sentence in 2021 with his final raft of pardons and commutations.)
Fetterman contends that’s more than enough to expel Sen. Menendez from the Senate. And it’s in fact the standard that was used to expel fabulist New York Rep. George Santos from the House based on a House Ethics Committee report that corroborated many of the allegations in the 23-count federal indictment Santos faces.
Led by Rep. Michael Guest (R-MS), lawmakers on the House Ethics Committee put together a report that corroborated many of the allegations contained in the indictments, including a number of alleged financial misdeeds, such as reimbursing himself for loans to his congressional campaign that he appears to have never actually made — in essence, stealing money from campaign donors.
Rep. Menendez voted to expel Santos, making Santos the sixth House member ever thrown out of office by his colleagues.
And Bhalla has shown his campaign is serious in his primary bid, having raised more than $957,000 during the fourth quarter of 2023, giving him over $900,000 in cash on hand, with more expected to have come in during January, before the next Federal Election Commission report is filed.
“New Jerseyans deserve an honest choice at the ballot box,” Bhalla said in a Jan. 11 X post. “They deserve better than being told who they get to vote for. I’m incredibly proud of our campaign’s early fundraising success and know that your support will help bring our message of truth and transparency across the district.”
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Moreover, Bhalla has been through tough campaigns before in the sharp-elbowed world of New Jersey politics.
If elected, Bhalla would be the first turbaned Sikh elected to Congress and only the second Sikh sent to Washington. Bhalla, who was New Jersey’s first Sikh mayor, was subject to attack mailers calling him a terrorist during his 2017 mayoral campaign.
