Inside a Dem Senator’s Plan to Install His Son in Congress

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) is making an attempt to show his New Jersey turf right into a household backyard as he seeks to plant his son within the Home of Representatives seat he as soon as held himself.

Regardless of a purview that ostensibly spans the planet, sources inform The Each day Beast that the chairman of the Senate International Relations Committee stays intensely centered on the 62 sq. miles of his native Hudson County. And together with his previous ally Rep. Albio Sires (D-NJ) retiring this yr from the congressional district encompassing the county’s main inhabitants facilities—the district the senator himself represented between 1993 and 2006—Menendez seems to have determined his son and namesake should exchange him.

And the Democratic Get together seems to have been doing his bidding: On the nationwide degree, Robert Menendez Jr. has acquired the backing of the political motion committee of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, to which his father belongs. In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy endorsed the 36-year-old for the seat earlier than he even formally launched his marketing campaign. However maybe most significantly, Menendez Jr. has the assist of the native Hudson County Democratic Group, which has already gotten two of his prime opponents kicked off the June 7 major poll and is mobilizing its electoral military of municipal workers—a lot of them first- and second-generation immigrants from nations with tenuous job protections for civil servants.

“He’s like an icon that everybody bends to,” Agustin Torres, an award-winning retired journalist who lined the realm for 45 years, stated of Menendez Sr. “That’s a plum to present away simply because it’s Menendez’s child. He hasn’t proven he can govern something but.”

Neither Menendez’s spokespeople responded on-the-record to questions for this story.

The youthful’s impending coronation (in such a Democratic district that the November election is a formality) has rankled native editorial boards and progressive activists alike.

“Folks in Hudson County have develop into very cynical about how politics function right here,” warned Hector Oseguera, a lawyer primarily based in Union Metropolis—the senator’s hometown—who challenged Sires in 2020. “One thing like this feeds into that notion of politics: that the people who find themselves dominated by these politicians don’t have a say as a result of there’s a membership that makes all these choices.”

However the royal remedy may not so appall the son, who seems to have been prepped for energy from an early age. The scion attended the non-public Hudson College in Hoboken, the place tuition and costs prime $25,000 a yr, greater than half the typical Hudson County resident’s annual earnings. His LinkedIn profile exhibits he graduated straight from Rutgers Regulation in 2011 into Lowenstein Sandler, a white shoe agency identified for its politically linked attorneys, who’ve included a number of present and former attorneys common of New Jersey and Biden Drug Enforcement Administrator Anne Milgram. Its purchasers are sometimes non-public corporations with enterprise earlier than the state. Lowenstein Sandler additionally belongs to a restricted pool of authorized outfits authorized to function counsel to New Jersey and its municipalities.

REUTERS/Joe Penney

In 2018, NorthJersey.com recognized Lowenstein Sandler because the senator’s single largest financier throughout his congressional profession. The positioning additionally reported the agency was among the many greatest contributors to his authorized protection fund, which helped Menendez Sr. fend off federal bribery expenses in 2017.

Quickly after touchdown at Lowenstein Sandler, Menendez Jr. deserted his native state for Manhattan’s ultra-affluent Higher West Aspect, despite the fact that he wouldn’t be admitted to the bar in New York until 2014.

When he returned ultimately to the Backyard State close to the top of the last decade, he and his spouse moved right into a condominium belonging to Silverman Constructing, whose homeowners are longtime donors to his father’s marketing campaign and political motion committees. Federal Election Fee information present Menendez Jr. made a number of political contributions in 2019 from the 1,045 sq. foot, southern-facing duplex in downtown Jersey Metropolis, with its hardwood flooring, marble toilet with radiant heated tiles, Juliet balconies, and rooftop view of the Statue of Liberty.

However Hudson County property information present Menendez Jr. by no means bought the unit within the historic, landmarked Majestic Theater constructing, and neither his marketing campaign nor Silverman would produce a lease or file of funds for the lodging.

“I’m not going to present you that,” stated Paul Silverman, one of many firm’s principals. “It was a market lease. I needn’t offer you greater than that.”

The association scarcely shocked Torres, the veteran political columnist, who as soon as included the Silvermans on his record of probably the most influential folks within the area.

“Whoever is in energy, or the highest of the leaderboard proper now, that’s who they cozy as much as,” he stated, noting the founders’ lengthy historical past of cultivating relationships with native officers, and fertilizing them with marketing campaign presents.

The good irony, based on insiders, is that for all of the exertions to safe Menendez Jr. the Sires seat, the household’s authentic plan was not for him to run for Congress in any respect. And this, sources stated, is as a result of the elder Menendez groomed his son not simply to be his inheritor—however the instrument of his revenge.

When the senator escaped the Division of Justice’s clutches in November 2017, he surprised observers with a bitter speech exterior the federal courthouse in Newark.

“To those that have been digging my political grave so they might bounce into my seat,” Menendez Sr. warned. “I do know who you might be and I received’t neglect you.”

Native retailers reported on the time, and sources confirmed to The Each day Beast not too long ago, that the lawmaker’s remarks have been aimed at the very least partly at Jersey Metropolis Mayor Steve Fulop, who had taken tentative steps to hunt the Senate within the occasion of Menendez’s conviction. Fulop’s crew declined to remark for this story.

The authorized database LexisNexis signifies Menendez Jr. moved to the Silverman condominium in Jersey Metropolis the yr after his father’s mistrial, and New Jersey Division of Elections information present his spouse registered to vote within the Backyard State for the primary time in Could 2018. Two years after that, the couple purchased a home a brief distance away from the Majestic Theatre advanced.

In late 2020, phrase surfaced that Menendez Jr. was making ready to run towards Fulop. And the subsequent yr, ten months forward of the nonpartisan municipal vote, the strain between the senator and the mayor burst into the open, with Menendez Sr. attacking his fellow Democrat’s “file of damaged guarantees” and Fulop slamming the senator as “hell-bent on forcing his son down the throats of Jersey Metropolis voters to broaden his personal political energy.”

That March, Menendez Sr. relocated his federal workplace from Newark to Jersey Metropolis, planting a taxpayer-funded foot in his rival’s territory. Hudson County Commissioner Invoice O’Dea informed The Each day Beast that a number of social gathering gamers urged him to personally meet with the senator’s son to speak him out of operating, although he stated the assembly by no means got here collectively.

“I don’t suppose Menendez [Sr.] made any bones about what it was: he was ticked off—and this was by no means acknowledged to me instantly—that one way or the other Steve was coveting his Senate seat whereas he was on trial,” stated O’Dea, who was at pains to emphasise he discovered the youthful Menendez personally spectacular. “I believe that was the onus of what the issue was. Everybody assumes it primarily based on the assertion Bob made.”

However for as soon as, Hudson County’s Democratic honchos defied the senator, and aligned themselves with Fulop. And the rationale for this goes to the supply of political energy within the space.

The Democratic group, as insiders described it to The Each day Beast, is much less a machine than a contraption: 12 mayors of 12 municipalities functioning as 12 massive wheels who, no matter their private enmities, flip in unison to maintain the engine operating. If the Hudson County Democratic Group betrayed Fulop, these gears would jam and it might lose energy within the statewide Democratic Get together to the political dynamos of Newark and south Jersey.

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And so Menendez Jr. by no means filed to run for mayor. In April 2021, Gov. Murphy nominated him to the board of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which oversees delivery, rail, and air hubs within the area, which sources described to The Each day Beast as a comfort prize. Murphy’s workplace insisted Menendez Jr.’s background as a company legal professional made him “an excellent match” for the position.

However having refused the senator as soon as, the native powerbrokers dared not do it once more. And so the battle for Sires’s seat was over earlier than he introduced his retirement final December. Even Fulop fell in line behind the senator’s son.

For critics of the system, it was only a signal that politics as common had returned to New Jersey. In spite of everything, when Menendez Sr. received appointed to the Senate to interchange former Gov. Jon Corzine, the county institution made positive Sires changed him within the Home of Representatives.

“It form of works like a seventeenth Century feudal empire, the place all people inherits energy,” stated Oseguera, the erstwhile rebel. “Normally it’s a lackey of the system who will get elevated. This time, it is a senator’s son.”