Over time, Bob Menendez gained a repute as New Jersey’s final political survivor. On Tuesday, his endurance ran out.
The conviction of the Democratic senator on 16 counts in a sweeping bribery case comes practically seven years after he beat prior corruption expenses due to a hung jury — and 18 years after one other federal investigation ended with out expenses.
When Menendez walked out of court docket following his 2017 mistrial, he ominously warned the Democrats who had been “digging my political grave” that he wouldn’t neglect them. On Tuesday, he vowed to maintain combating for his freedom, declaring “the regulation and the info didn’t maintain” his conviction. He’s already operating for reelection as an impartial.
However this isn’t 2017. Menendez’s political profession has been lifeless and buried since his indictment in September, when his get together deserted him and Rep. Andy Kim launched a profitable main bid to exchange Menendez. Within the ensuing months, New Jersey’s political system successfully collapsed, with Democrats upending the way in which they’ve performed enterprise within the state for many years. Simply final month, a state grand jury indicted New Jersey’s strongest Democratic political boss, George Norcross, on expenses he led a special corruption scheme.
Now Menendez, who has just about no likelihood of profitable reelection as an impartial within the deep-blue state, is staring on the ruins of a 50-year political profession and the prospect of a long time in jail.
It was a spectacular downfall that, regardless of the two-month-long trial and mountains of damning proof, nonetheless evinced a measure of shock from New Jersey politicos used to seeing the senator survive federal investigations and prosecutions — all whereas accumulating energy within the Senate and gaining a repute as a coverage wonk.
Menendez, the 70-year-old son of working-class Cuban immigrants, wasn’t at all times cherished by all of his fellow New Jersey Democrats. However his political acumen was universally revered — and feared. His affect peaked as chair of the Senate Committee on International Relations, a place he held whereas taking bribes in change for favors to learn the governments of Egypt and Qatar.
“For his total profession, he’s operated in shades of grey nearer to black,” mentioned Jersey Metropolis Mayor Steven Fulop, a Democratic candidate for governor in 2025. “Each step of the way in which he’s operated in a questionable method whereas on the identical time being extraordinarily well-versed in coverage, very sensible in his politics, and on the identical time having a pure base within the Latino neighborhood.”
Even Fulop — who started his political profession in 2004 with a hopeless main marketing campaign in opposition to Menendez, then a member of the Home — credited the senator with getting essential issues performed for New Jersey, like advocating for a light-weight rail that “remodeled” public transit in his house base of Hudson County, simply throughout the Hudson River from Manhattan.
Julie Roginsky, a Democratic advisor, mentioned Menendez’s downfall is tragic contemplating his document and what he represented to many.
“I don’t know if disbelief is the phrase. It’s super disappointment,” Roginsky mentioned of the conviction. “He’s an extremely efficient senator, a trailblazer for the Latino neighborhood, and a throwback to the times when any person attained the best places of work within the state by climbing their manner up the ladder and never by buying a seat.”
For many years, Menendez instilled a mixture of reverence and worry in fellow Democrats.
Throughout that 2017 corruption trial in Newark, outstanding Democrat after outstanding Democrat confirmed as much as court docket to look at the proceedings, signaling their help for the senator, who appeared to take account of the few who didn’t present. Even a bipartisan duo of Senate colleagues, New Jersey’s Cory Booker and South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, took the stand as character witnesses.
The newest case in opposition to him was a stark distinction. Elected officers averted Menendez’s first public look following his September indictment and didn’t attend his trial in decrease Manhattan.
However, the stench of corruption round Menendez wasn’t sufficient to derail the profession of his son, Rep. Rob Menendez, whose 2022 political rise from relative obscurity was engineered by his father. Most of New Jersey’s Democratic institution caught with the youthful Menendez in his profitable main reelection run in opposition to Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla.
Reformer to defendant
Menendez was formed by New Jersey’s boss-driven political system a lot the way in which he would later form it.
“He’s a man who grew up in a corrupt system and found out how one can navigate it, and it will definitely caught up with him. I feel that’s what his legacy goes to be,” mentioned Chris Russell, a Republican advisor who labored on the 2018 marketing campaign in opposition to Menendez.
Born to blue-collar Cuban immigrants who fled throughout the Fulgencio Batista regime, Menendez was raised in a tenement in Union Metropolis, a one-square mile, extraordinarily densely populated municipality with a giant Hispanic inhabitants.
His first marketing campaign was 50 years in the past: For Union Metropolis faculty board, when he was a protege of town’s mayor and highly effective political boss, William Musto. Later, after being appointed board secretary, Menendez, alleging corruption, broke with Musto and would later testify at his benefactor’s corruption trial in 1982. He donned a bulletproof vest — a story he would inform all through his political rise to spice up his credibility as a reformer.
Menendez was elected mayor of Union Metropolis in 1986, a place he continued to carry after he was elected to the state Meeting after which the state Senate. He gained a seat within the U.S. Home in 1992 and have become a statewide determine along with his appointment to the Senate by Gov. Jon Corzine originally of 2006.
Corruption allegations and rumors quickly haunted Menendez. Throughout his marketing campaign for a full first time period, then-U.S. Lawyer Chris Christie subpoenaed information associated to Menendez and a nonprofit, North Hudson Group Motion Corp., that over a nine-year interval paid the senator about $300,000 to hire workplace area in a Union Metropolis home he owned. Menendez, as a Home member, had helped the nonprofit safe federal grants.
Menendez gained a full time period throughout the 2006 Democratic wave and the investigation died down, with many Democrats arguing Christie had gone after Menendez to spice up his personal political profession or to please the Bush administration. A 12 months earlier than his 2012 reelection marketing campaign, Menendez confirmed off a clearance letter from federal prosecutors stating that the case was formally closed. However only a 12 months later, federal prosecutors started Menendez once more, this time concerning his relationship with rich Florida eye physician Salomon Melgen.
Menendez’s first indictment dropped in 2015. Prosecutors accused him of blocking a U.S. donation of safety screening gear to the Dominican Republic to learn an organization owned by Melgen, and interceding on Melgen’s behalf on a multimillion-dollar Medicare dispute, amongst different issues. Melgen, they alleged, in flip offered Menendez with thousands and thousands of {dollars} in marketing campaign contributions, personal jet flights and Dominican villa stays.
Menendez by no means disputed that he did favors for Melgen. However his authorized workforce efficiently argued in court docket that the favors weren’t in change for items, however out of friendship. The jury deadlocked on all counts, with most favoring acquittal. The decide declared a mistrial.
Nonetheless, the case damage Menendez — by no means spectacularly standard with voters in New Jersey — within the polls, and it ended only a 12 months earlier than his 2018 reelection marketing campaign. However, as soon as once more, it was a Democratic wave 12 months, and Menendez managed an 11-point victory over Republican opponent Bob Hugin, who put tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} of his personal cash into his marketing campaign.
The shut name didn’t cow the senator. Of their 2023 indictment, prosecutors on this newest case charged that Menendez and his spouse, Nadine — a codefendant whose trial has been delayed because of her breast most cancers prognosis and therapy — started hatching a scheme in 2018 to simply accept bribes. In change, prosecutors alleged, they did favors for 2 different co-defendants, one with ties to the Egyptian authorities, and a cooperating witness.
“The conceitedness went to his head. He thought he was so highly effective and so essential that he believed his personal PR,” mentioned Hugin, who additionally grew up in Union Metropolis and knew Menendez when the 2 served as scholar representatives on its faculty board. Hugin now chairs the New Jersey Republican State Committee.
What’s subsequent
Senate Democrats have but to say whether or not they’ll search to expel Menendez however had resisted calls to take action earlier than his conviction. Shortly after the jury learn the decision, Senate Majority Chief Chuck Schumer known as on Menendez to resign, becoming a member of greater than half of Senate Democrats who had already performed so. At the very least one Democratic senator is contemplating a push to expel Menendez.
“In mild of this responsible verdict, Senator Menendez should now do what is true for his constituents, the Senate, and our nation, and resign,” Schumer mentioned.
Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy on Tuesday additionally known as for Menendez to resign and, barring that, mentioned the Senate ought to expel him. Murphy mentioned he would appoint a short lived substitute for the seat. If he chooses Kim, who beat Murphy’s spouse within the main, that might give the senator a bump in seniority ought to he win the November election.
The conviction information might truly be construed as constructive for New Jersey Democrats, because it makes a Menendez impartial bid more durable to realize traction at Kim’s expense. Kim is going through rich Republican hotelier Curtis Bashaw, a average, in November.
“Each % he will get is coming from an Andy Kim voter. In a detailed race, he might do quite a lot of injury,” Fulop mentioned.
There’s additionally hypothesis that Menendez might keep within the race to break Democrats in an try to realize clemency from Donald Trump ought to he win in November. Trump called Menendez’s prosecution an “assault,” commuted the jail sentence of Melgen, Menendez’s former co-defendant, and it was throughout his administration that the Division of Justice selected to not retry Menendez after his prior mistrial.
“I feel anybody who acquired convicted could be in search of clemency. I feel he’s additionally going to be in search of revenge,” Russell mentioned. “That’s an indicator of Bob Menendez, to precise revenge on individuals who wronged him. This time he thinks he’s acquired a complete get together of people that wronged him.”
