. Jersey New Jersey at a Glance State Profile - Gov. McGreevey (D) - Sen. Torricelli (D) - Sen. Corzine (D) Presidential Politics Congressional Districting - 01 - Andrews (D) - 02 - LoBiondo (R) - 03 - Saxton (R) - 04 - Smith (R) - 05 - Roukema (R) - 06 - Pallone (D) - 07 - Ferguson (R) - 08 - Pascrell Jr. (D) - 09 - Rothman (D) - 10 - Payne (D) - 11 - Frelinghuysen (R) - 12 - Holt (D) - 13 - Menendez (D) Almanac 2002 Home States & Districts Elected Officials For district profiles and additional information on the elected officials of New Jersey, please use the pull-down menu above.

The Statue of Liberty, standing in New York Harbor since 1886, has been the great symbol of America welcoming immigrants to its shores. Actually, the statue is on the New Jersey side of the harbor, and so (as the Supreme Court ruled in 1998) is most of Ellis Island, where they were processed. The towns sitting on the granite and gneiss ridge of Hudson County, overlooking the harbor, have in particular been immigrant territory. When immigration was shut off in 1924, many children and grandchildren of the Irish and Italian immigrants stayed in Hudson County, living in the same neighborhoods, working on the same docks or factories and voting the dictates of the same political machine.

Hudson County was the setting of one of America's classic political machines, undisciplined by any metropolitan elite. From 1917-49, the boss of Hudson County was Frank (''I am the law'') Hague; his machine chose governors and U.S. Senators, prosecutors and judges, and had influence in the White House of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Hague collected high taxes from industries clustered here--who then passed them on to consumers everywhere--and in return gave them an orderly city, free of most crime and vice, and a work force insulated against racketeers and militant unions. Hague's successor, John V. Kenny, was boss from 1949-71--continuous power for 54 years. But Hudson County began changing again, in ways little noticed by either the local machine or Manhattan sophisticates. New immigrants were coming in--refugees from Castro's Cuba, other Latinos and Asians after the 1965 immigration law changed the rules. Union City became predominantly Cuban, Jersey City neighborhoods became heavily Latino. Upscale young singles looking for lower rents moved into Hoboken's five-story Victorian apartments that sparkle with light off the Hudson, and are a quick commute through the PATH tubes to Wall Street or Greenwich Village. Starting in the 1980s, huge new condominium and office developments went up in Jersey City--Port Liberte, Newport, Liberty Place--and going up now are more--Port Imperial South, a 45-story Goldman Sachs tower, back-office buildings for Chase Bank, Merrill Lynch, Paine Webber, U.S. Trust. Aiding this private sector growth is reform of the public sector, notably by Jersey City's Republican mayor, Bret Schundler, a former Wall Streeter elected in 1992 after the incumbent went to jail, who was elected to full terms in 1993 and 1997 and ran for governor in 2001. Meanwhile, new immigrants are coming in. Union City is less Cuban today, as middle class Cubans move to Bergen County suburbs, and more Colombian, Ecuadoran, Peruvian and Dominican. Old rail lines long embedded in pavement are being dug up and used for the new Hudson-Bergen light rail lines, and new ferry terminals are being built on the Hudson.

The 13th Congressional District of New Jersey includes most of Hudson County plus most of the immigrant entry ports along the water. It was designed in 1992 to be an ''Hispanic influence'' district; 48% of its residents in 2000 were Hispanic and 13% were black. With most of Jersey City and all of Union City and West New York and Weehawken, it also includes 105,000 people in the old Ironbound area of Newark, a neighborhood kept alive during Newark's bad days by Portuguese and Brazilian immigrants, now buzzing with crowded stores and schools and new $300,000 houses. And it proceeds south past Port Newark, now highly mechanized and employing only one-tenth as many longshoremen as a generation ago, to include the port sections of Elizabeth and Perth Amboy, with its own new waterfront developments.

The congressman from the 13th is Robert Menendez, a Democrat elected in 1992. He is of Cuban descent and grew up in Union City, America's most densely populated city (in 2000 it had 60,000 people in 1.3 square miles), and got into politics early. He was elected to the school board in 1974, at 20. He worked for Union City Mayor William Musto in the 1970s, but quit and testified against Musto in a corruption trial, and ran against him and lost in 1982. Menendez was elected mayor in 1986 and to the legislature in 1987, serving in both jobs (a common practice in New Jersey) until his 1992 election to Congress. When new district lines were created and incumbent Frank Guarini retired, Menendez won the primary 68%-32% and the general 64%-31%.

In the House, Menendez serves on the International Relations Committee where he became ranking minority member on the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee in 2001. He has been a strong supporter of anti-Castro legislation--the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act, the 1996 Helms-Burton Act. He criticized the Clinton administration for not enforcing Helms-Burton and taking steps to relax the trade embargo. When Elian Gonzalez was assaulted by federal agents, he said grimly, "I think that the use of armed agents with automatic weapons, in the pre-dawn hours on the morning of the holiest weekend of the year, is, in my mind, something we would see in Fidel Castro's Cuba, not in the democracy of the United States." In 1999 he protested against the Baltimore Orioles' trip to Cuba and kept charter flights to Cuba out of Newark Airport. But his concerns are not limited to Cuba. He supported the Caribbean Basin Initiative and the proposal to allow Central American and Haitian refugees long in this country to remain. He denounced the "total disregard of the United States Navy for the people of Vieques." He was chief sponsor of a 1999 resolution to withhold money from the IAEA because it was helping Iran build a nuclear power plant.

Noting, perhaps, the increasing importance of the financial services industry in Hudson County, he broke with many Democrats to support bankruptcy reform and financial services deregulation; one Blue Dog Democrat called him "the pro-business member of the leadership." He has pressed for more set-asides for minority contractors and Senate confirmation of Hispanic judges. Noting that almost all immigrants are eager to learn English, he says "English-only is a solution to a problem that does not exist."

On local issues, he helped to secure $733 million to deepen the main channel of Newark Bay from 40 to 45 feet by 2004 to accommodate larger cargo ships to the container port. He seeks a cleanup of the Passaic River and wants Hudson dredging pollution standards to be based on "sound science and thoughtful review, not rhetoric." He got $12 million for a ferry terminal near the Port Imperial South projects, whose owner is a key financial backer. "If he ends up, along with everybody else, being a beneficiary of what I'm advocating, what can I say?" He has obtained funding for Hudson-Bergen and Newark-Elizabeth light rail and for Hope VI grants to transform public housing in Jersey City, Elizabeth and Newark.

Menendez has shown fine political skills. In 1997, after replacing Bill Richardson as chief deputy minority whip, he aggressively supported Loretta Sanchez against the election challenge brought by Robert Dornan. In November 1998 Democrats elected him vice chairman of the Caucus; on the second ballot he beat Cal Dooley of California 124-81. When Senator Frank Lautenberg announced his retirement in February 1999, Menendez was widely expected to run for the Senate. But support was not forthcoming from New Jersey Senator Bob Torricelli, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman, who wanted a deep-pockets candidate and found him in Jon Corzine, whom Menendez endorsed in November 1999; in July 2000, after Torricelli announced he was running for governor, Menendez choreographed an endorsement by many Hudson County Democrats of Jim McGreevey, which helped persuade Torricelli ignominiously to withdraw from the race. Menendez does not forget. In 1978 he had bucked Hudson County Democratic leaders and backed Bill Bradley for the Senate; when he asked for Bradley's endorsement in his own 1992 primary, Bradley refused--"a very disappointing moment"--and in 1999 Menendez endorsed Al Gore for president. Another reason that Menendez decided not to run for the Senate is that Minority Leader Dick Gephardt urged him to stay in the House, arguing that as a leader of a Democratic majority he could be more important than a junior senator. He is still in the minority, but he is eight years, seven months younger than those higher on the leadership ladder. In 2000 he was mentioned briefly as a possible vice presidential nominee and following the election went to Miami to help Al Gore, at the risk of offending Republican Cuban-Americans who have been big contributors.

They are not the only ones: in 2000 Menendez had $1.7 million in his campaign treasury, although he has had no serious competition for his seat since 1992. Redistricting will likely preserve this Hispanic-influence district in pretty much its current form.

Cook's Call:
Safe. This Jersey City-based district gave Gore his biggest winning margin in the state in 2000 (47%) and will not give Menendez any worries in 2002. Conventional wisdom held that this district was losing population and would have to be altered significantly in redistricting, but it was actually one of the faster growing in the state and needs to shed about 10,000 residents.

Update: June 19, 2002
In October 2001 Menendez announced her intention to run for Democratic Caucus chair. The move pits him against Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro. Although technically a notch below Menendez in the current Democratic leadership line-up, DeLauro has had great visibility in her role as an assistant to Minority Leader Gephardt. The Caucus chairman will be chosen after the November election.

The People:

• Pop. 2000: 656,461; Pop. 1990: 594,875, up 10.4% 1990-2000.
• 55.7% White, 12.9% Black, 6% Asian, 0.5% Amer. Indian, 0.1% Hawaiian, 5.8% Two+ races, 19% Other. 47.2% Hispanic origin.

2000 Presidential Vote Gore (D) 117,047 (72%) Bush (R) 41,102 (25%) Nader (Green) 3,770 (2%)

1996 Presidential Vote Clinton (D) 115,576 (71%) Dole (R) 35,266 (22%) Perot (I) 8,411 (5%)