The New Jersey Senate Race Is a Battle of the Bobs

The Northeast’s soggy late summer led to the last-minute postponement of the premier social event of the golden-ager calendar in this part of New Jersey: the Bergen County Senior Citizens Picnic. And so instead of shaking hands and scarfing hot dogs, Bob Hugin is holed up in the back of a sushi restaurant in this upmarket town 25 miles west of Manhattan.

Hugin, the Republican nominee for Senate here, is mounting what many cast as a quixotic battle in this heavily Democratic state. His strategy thus far has been to attend every gathering of, oh, three or more people. Not just the senior citizens’ picnic: Since announcing his candidacy in February, the Summit resident has shown up at the Dominican parade in Paterson, the Puerto Rican heritage parade in Jersey City, the Ecuadorian Parade and Festival in Newark, a Kenny Chesney concert at Met Life Stadium, the Labor Day parade in South Plainfield, and the St. Patrick’s Day party at Murph’s Tavern in Totowa (this was a few days after the pre-Saint Patrick’s Day Parade Brunch in Wall Township, which he also attended). Even for shut-ins, there’s been no escaping the candidate. Hugin, running a largely self-financed campaign, has been on television since February, blanketing this pricey state in advertising.

New Jersey is in the midst of an unexpected battle of the Bobs. Incumbent Bob Menendez, a senator since 2006, a member of the House of Representatives for 13 years before that, and a mayor and state representative before that, was badly weakened by legal travails over the past several years. Though he’s running as a Democrat in a state that hasn’t been kind to Republicans running for national office for the last three decades, he finds himself in a tough spot.

Menendez, 64, was indicted in 2015 for corruption. The charges stemmed from the senator’s relationship with a Florida doctor, Salomon Melgen, with whom he forged an unusually close friendship. Criminally close, the Department of Justice argued: Melgen lavished Menendez with gifts (trips on his private plane, free nights in swanky Paris hotels) and in turn, the senator allegedly did his bidding on a number of matters, including securing U.S. visas for Melgen’s many girlfriends and attempting to pressure the Health and Human Services Department to change its Medicare billing practices in a way that would help his friend.

Late last year, Menendez’s trial ended in a hung jury—he was not exonerated—while Melgen was convicted of Medicare fraud and sentenced to 17 years in prison. (Melgen was found to have subjected his patients to unnecessary and often painful medical tests simply to bilk Medicare.) The Department of Justice later announced that it wouldn’t be refiling charges against the senator.

After his indictment, Menendez stepped down from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but the party gave him the all-clear following the mistrial, and he continued in his reelection bid. Voters, however, seem less thrilled than the party bosses: In the June Democratic primary, Menendez took only 62 percent of the vote against a no-name challenger who barely campaigned. Perhaps conscious of his swooning popularity, he has now adopted the “barely campaign” strategy himself. Rarely making public appearances in New Jersey, he’s stuck close to Washington this summer.

Hugin, also 64, sensed an opening after Menendez’s mistrial. The New Jersey native, retired Marine, and chairman of Celgene, a NASDAQ-listed pharmaceutical company that he used to run as CEO, began to commission polls, he says. He only wanted to run if he had a real shot at winning, and the polls gave him that confidence, he recalls.

Hugin, gray-haired and gravel-voiced, announced his candidacy in February and has run a relentless, locally focused campaign ever since. Over lunch, he begins by bemoaning the limits on the state-and-local tax deduction included in last year’s GOP tax bill. While that law represented a tax cut for most Americans, the SALT deduction limitation meant a tax hike for many wealthy filers in states with high local taxes like New Jersey, New York, Maryland, and California. Filers used to be able to deduct the entirety of their local property and income taxes; now they can deduct only the first $10,000. Hugin wants to raise the cap.

Indeed, in many ways, Hugin sounds more like a gubernatorial candidate than one running for national office. “I’m going to talk about every issue,” he says. “Whether it’s a state issue, municipal issue, local issue.” He deplores the outmigration from New Jersey, which he blames on high living costs. He laments the massive fiscal problems that have piled up in Trenton, especially the pension debts. “In Trenton, higher taxes and higher spending have been [seen] as the solution, as opposed to the problem,” he says.

While he’s never been a politician before, years in the public eye as the CEO of a publicly traded company have trained Hugin to stay on message. He declines to comment on the performance of New Jersey’s other senator, Cory Booker, for example. (“My race is Bob Hugin versus Bob Menendez,” he says.) And he’s careful on the subject of the president, who remains unpopular here. “The American people had a choice in 2016, and they elected [Trump]. And in 2020, they’re going to have another choice. And there are a number of people who do things in a way that I don’t like. There are things that he does that I don’t like. And I’m going to be very clear about those things,” he says.

Hugin’s approach is working, if the polls are to be believed. In April, Menendez led 53 to 32, according to Monmouth. By late August, the incumbent’s lead had shrunk to 43-37. Hugin’s campaign spokesman tells me that their internal polls show a “dead heat.”

And Menendez acts worried: Rather than have the candidate press the flesh, his campaign has released a series of advertisements targeting Hugin’s record at Celgene. He’s also painted as too close to Trump. Hugin, for his part, says he will continue to be anywhere and everywhere—“I’m not afraid to answer questions,” he says. “I’m not running away from my past, I’m running towards everything I’ve done in my life.” Menendez has agreed to meet Hugin for one debate, scheduled for October 24.

Even if Hugin comes up short, one New Jersey political observer points out that a weak showing from Menendez could have knock-on effects for Democrats’ hopes of taking the House of Representatives. Democrats are aiming to take up to five GOP-held New Jersey House seats this November, including Leonard Lance’s and Tom MacArthur’s. But depressed Democratic turnout, with Menendez at the top of the ticket, would make that more difficult.

Should he win, on the other hand, Hugin seems likely to join the list of once-optimistic citizen-legislators who end up stymied by the gridlock, partisanship, and emphasis on arcane procedure that define the contemporary Senate. The upper chamber, after all, has demoralized many a would-be hard-charging “doer.” And being 1 of 100 senators is far different from being one CEO. But for now that seems like a problem Hugin is eager to confront. On September 25, he plans to attend the rescheduled Bergen County Senior Citizens Picnic.

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