Robert Menendez, New Jersey’s junior senator, was appointed by Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine in January 2006, and won election to a full term 10 months later. His ascension to the Senate was no lucky break, but rather the culmination of a career marked by an ability to adapt to and thrive in bruising political arenas. Ambitious and hard-driving, he is admired—if not warmly regarded—for his strategic savvy and prodigious fundraising skills. Menendez managed to emerge from what was a disastrous 2010 election for his party with a measure of respect for his work to ensure that the Senate stayed in Democratic hands.
Menendez is of Cuban descent and grew up in Union City, getting into politics early. He was elected to the school board in 1974, at age 20. He worked for Union City Mayor William Musto in the 1970s, but quit and testified against Musto in a corruption trial, wearing a bulletproof vest for protection because of death threats. Menendez was elected mayor in 1986, and elected to the Assembly in 1987 and Senate in 1991; he served both as mayor and legislator, which had been a common practice in New Jersey, until his 1992 election to Congress. Menendez was the first New Jersey Latino in the state legislature and in Congress. When new district lines were created and incumbent Frank Guarini retired, Menendez won the 1992 primary 68%-32% and the general election 64%-31%. As head of the Democratic Party organization in Hudson County, which has the highest number of registered Democrats of any county in the state, he was for many years a major player in state politics.
In the House, Menendez was a strong supporter of anti-Castro legislation, including the 1996 trade embargo. He sponsored a bill in 2004 to put illegal immigrants on the path to permanent worker status and citizenship. Noting the increasing importance of the financial services industry in Hudson County, his home base, he broke with many Democrats to support the 2005 bankruptcy bill and financial services deregulation.
By the late 1990s, Menendez was on track to a possible Senate candidacy. When Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg announced his retirement in 1999, Menendez was widely expected to run for the seat, but support was not forthcoming from New Jersey Sen. Bob Torricelli, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chairman, who preferred Jon Corzine, a wealthy former investment banker who could self-finance his campaign. Minority Leader Dick Gephardt urged Menendez to stay in the House, arguing that as a leader of a Democratic majority—Democrats came within a few seats of winning a majority in November 2000—he would soon have more influence. Menendez busied himself raising more than $4 million for fellow Democrats and traveled around the country campaigning. His Hispanic background was an asset, and not just within the 20-member Hispanic Caucus. “There are 50 to 60 members who are not Hispanic but have significant Hispanic communities in their districts,” he said.
When Democrat David Bonior left the House to run for Michigan governor in 2002, Democrats picked California’s Nancy Pelosi over Maryland’s Steny Hoyer to succeed Bonior as party whip. Menendez announced he would run for caucus chairman, the No. 3 leadership position, against Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut. Pelosi endorsed DeLauro, and Hoyer endorsed Menendez. On the secret ballot, Menendez won 104-103. As caucus chairman, he continued to raise large sums for the party in the 2003-04 election season.
Then on Aug. 12, New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey announced that he had had an affair with a man he’d hired as his homeland security chief and would resign. Senate President Richard Codey became the acting Democratic governor for 14 months, and Corzine, then a Democratic U.S. senator, decided to run for governor. Menendez made it known that if Corzine were elected, he would run for Corzine’s Senate seat. He had amassed more than $4 million for a statewide campaign, far more than two potential Democratic rivals—U.S. Reps. Robert Andrews and Frank Pallone. Still, Menendez, Pallone and Andrews all actively campaigned for Corzine’s gubernatorial bid, while at the same time positioning themselves for a Senate campaign. Democrats worried about Menendez’s Hudson County political baggage, and had questions about his relationship with former aide Kay LiCausi and his efforts to steer lobbying and consulting work her way. Nonetheless, after Corzine was elected governor, he appointed Menendez to his Senate seat in January 2006. Menendez joined Sens. Mel Martinez of Florida and Ken Salazar of Colorado as the chamber’s Hispanic members.
Still, he had an upcoming election to worry about. Andrews and Pallone each decided they probably couldn’t compete with Menendez and declined to challenge him in the primary, leaving Menendez free to focus on his Republican opponent, state Sen. Tom Kean Jr., son and namesake of popular former Republican Gov. Thomas Kean. Menendez campaigned against the Iraq war, while Kean said he would have voted for the Iraq war resolution and opposed a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops. Kean reminded voters of Menendez’s influence in Hudson County.
In September 2006, U.S. Attorney Chris Christie subpoenaed records from a lease arrangement between Menendez and an anti-poverty group for which he had sought federal funding and that paid him some $300,000 in rent on a building he owned in Union City. Republicans spread rumors that Menendez might drop out. But Menendez responded with an attack ad linking Kean to contributors with ethics problems. Then it was revealed that the Kean campaign’s opposition researchers had contacted former Hudson County Executive Robert Janiszewski, who was serving time in federal prison on corruption charges. Menendez struck back with a television ad accusing Kean of a smear campaign: “Federal prisoner 25038-050. He’s Tom Kean Jr.’s newest adviser.” Polls late in the season showed Menendez with only a slight lead, and for a moment it seemed Republicans had one of the few opportunities to contest a Democrat-held seat in 2006. But Menendez held on to win 53%-44%.
In the Senate, Menendez took part in bipartisan discussions aimed at coming up with a comprehensive immigration bill, but walked out in May 2007, arguing that Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts had made too many concessions to Republicans and that the bill would “tear at the fabric of family reunification.” The proposed $19,000 fees required for legalization for a family of four, he said, were “punitive” and “impractical,” he said. Menendez sponsored his own unsuccessful amendment to make green-card holders eligible for legalization from May 2005 to January 2007. He continued to speak out on immigration after the bill died in 2007. He later defended tax rebates to illegal immigrants in the 2008 economic stimulus bill. “This new dimension about whether that person is undocumented or not—if in fact they paid taxes, then it seems to me that they are also going to continue to stimulate the economy,” he said.
He introduced comprehensive immigration legislation in September 2010, but the measure fell victim to a crowded election-year calendar. One of its components—the DREAM Act, which offered the children of illegal immigrants a path of citizenship in return for college or military service—ran into Democratic as well as GOP opposition in the 2010 lame-duck session, and Menendez acknowledged that a broader bill was unlikely to fare any better.
Menendez won a coveted slot on the Finance Committee in 2009. In that role, he backed two attempts in the committee to add a government-run “public option” to the health care bill, but both failed. His stance on that issue, as well as on immigration and other Democratic priorities, incensed New Jersey tea party activists, and in early 2010, they launched an effort to recall him. Menendez dismissed the recall as a “political stunt” and in April appealed to the state Supreme Court to stop their actions, calling them an “attack on the Constitution” because the document forbids the recall of a sitting U.S. senator. Seven months after hearing arguments in May, the court issued a 4-2 decision in agreement.
On the committee, Menendez in January 2009 succeeded in adding a one-year fix to the alternative minimum tax to the economic stimulus bill, which would protect middle-income taxpayers from having to pay a tax originally aimed at wealthy taxpayers who sheltered their earnings. In March 2009, he placed a hold on two of President Barack Obama’s nominees to administration jobs to protest a provision easing travel restrictions to Cuba that was included in an appropriations bill. “It’s a horrid process to start going down the road on. It means a handful of members can change the foreign policy of the United States,” Menendez said of mixing Cuba policy with appropriations legislation. His refusal to vote for the spending bill prevented it from getting the needed 60 votes until he was offered assurances by the administration that the Cuba rider would have little impact.
As a member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Menendez raised his profile on energy and environment issues. When the panel approved a wide-ranging bipartisan energy bill in June 2009, Menendez refused to support it, saying that a renewable energy mandate needed to be stronger and objecting to a provision allowing oil drilling within 45 miles of coastlines. A year later, following the BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Menendez was a central figure on the contentious issue of liability caps on legal damages that companies would face for the BP spill and future spills. He introduced a bill proposing to eliminate the $75 million cap, but the measure ran into strong opposition from Republicans as well as fellow Democrats Mark Begich of Alaska and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. Landrieu accused him of trying to put oil companies “out of business.” Nevertheless, she, Begich and Menendez sought to work out a compromise, and though they ran out of time in the 111th Congress (2009-10), they renewed their efforts in 2011.
Menendez got some negative attention for blocking a promotion for a prosecutor investigating Puerto Rican Gov. Anibal Acevedo-Vila, a friend of his, who, as the nonvoting delegate from Puerto Rico in the House, had cast a decisive vote for Menendez in the caucus chairman race. The prosecutor was in line to become the U.S. attorney in Puerto Rico and, at the time, was investigating Acevedo-Vila’s fundraising practices. The prosecutor got the appointment in the end, and Acevedo-Vila was indicted for violating campaign finance and tax laws in March 2008; he was defeated for re-election in November 2008.
In the 2008 election season, Menendez was the deputy director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, helping to raise money for Senate campaigns. He took over the chairmanship in the 2010 election cycle, attaining the fourth-ranking leadership position in the Senate Democratic majority. In February 2009, Menendez indicated that he would target Republican-held seats in Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. His low-key, disciplined approach contrasted sharply with that of his frenetic and publicity-driven predecessor, New York Democrat Chuck Schumer. But the economic downturn and the public’s discontent with Democrats’ health care bill worked heavily against him, and his party was shocked by Republican Scott Brown’s upset win in Massachusetts in the January 2010 special election. After that embarrassment, Menendez reportedly urged his party’s candidates at a private meeting to “run scared.” He ordered a review of their campaigns to ensure they could adjust to the demands of a “volatile” electorate.
As Republicans inched closer to gaining majority control of the House that fall, speculation mounted that the Senate too would fall to the GOP. But under Menendez, the DSCC outraised its Republican counterpart, $130 million to $115 million. Even though Democrats lost six Senate seats, many in the party were relieved that the damage wasn’t worse. Several vulnerable incumbents, including Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Colorado’s Michael Bennet, hung on to win, marking the first time in 80 years that the party in charge of the House lost control but the Senate did not. When Menendez arrived at the first post-election meeting with colleagues, he was greeted with a standing ovation. “The windstorm he was walking into, it wasn’t just 30 miles per hour winds with gusts up to 40 miles per hour; it was a hurricane,” Reid told The Record newspaper of Hackensack. Reid’s victory was attributed partly to Hispanic voter turnout that Menendez helped to bolster. Other senators said they were impressed given the handicap Menendez had stemming from the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling that enabled corporations and special-interest groups to donate unlimited amounts of money to Republicans. “People understand the huge challenges he faced,” said Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island.
For 2012, Menendez declined to stay on as DSCC chairman to concentrate on his own re-election. Menendez was in a strong political position in early 2011, but Republicans were targeting him.
