On Politics: A senator’s son fights for political survival
Good evening! All eyes have been on the hush-money trial of former President Donald Trump in Manhattan, and the question on everyone's mind is how his guilty verdict might shape the November election. But there's another trial taking place in Manhattan that has already turned politics upside down — at least, in New Jersey. I asked my colleague Tracey Tully, The New York Times's indomitable New Jersey correspondent, to tell us more. — Jess Bidgood
A senator's son fights for political survival
Representative Rob Menendez of New Jersey, a Democrat who is named for his father, the state's embattled senior senator, Robert Menendez, should have been a shoo-in for re-election to a second term. Instead, on the eve of his primary on Tuesday, he's fighting for political survival. Menendez's close race, like his rapid rise to office, has everything to do with his last name. As the son campaigns in New Jersey's Eighth Congressional District, which contains swaths of Hoboken and Jersey City, his father has been generating headlines on the other side of the Hudson River, in Manhattan, where he is on trial for the second time, accused of accepting bribes. The congressman's chief rival is Ravi Bhalla, the mayor of Hoboken, who has tried to shape the primary into a referendum on patronage, corruption and the corrosive influence of machine politics. Internal polls show the contest to be a virtual tie. And the elder Menendez's decision to seek a spot on the ballot this fall despite his troubles — a move that echoes Donald Trump's decision to run for president despite his own legal travails — could complicate his son's path back to office even more. A senator flirts with another runSenator Menendez said two months ago that he would not run for the Democratic nomination for the seat he has held for 18 years, sparing voters the confusion of a ballot bearing both Menendezes' names on Tuesday. But he has continued to flirt with dreams of a comeback campaign, and on Monday afternoon he filed over 2,400 nominating signatures to run for re-election in November as an independent. I had asked him twice last week about whether he intended to run. The first time, he told me coyly to "stay tuned." The second time, he lectured me about verifying my facts. The senator's decision to send several men to deliver voter signatures to the New Jersey Department of State's office in Trenton on Monday, a day before the deadline, ensures that on the eve of his son's re-election race, just as the congressman's ground game was kicking into high gear, the senator will — again — dominate the news cycle. It also gives opponents an extra day to pore over the signatures, looking for errors, before the June 10 deadline to file a challenge. Rob Menendez, 38, is not accused of any wrongdoing. But the charges against his father are cinematic in scope. He is accused of being an agent of Egypt, taking payoffs to buff Qatar's image in advance of the World Cup and trying to strong-arm state and federal prosecutors into quashing criminal cases for allies in New Jersey. His reward, according to an 18-count indictment, came in the form of gold bars, wads of cash and a Mercedes-Benz convertible. The senator has maintained his innocence, and he has appeared confident as he sits flanked by four high-powered lawyers in Federal District Court. During breaks, he has been seen commenting on his likeness in drawings sketched by courtroom artists, singing loudly to himself and eating alone in the courthouse cafeteria. Trial testimony is likely to get even spicier this week. The next witness will be a Senate aide involved in planning a congressional delegation trip to Egypt and Qatar that Senator Menendez and his wife, Nadine Menendez, attended. In the midst of the planning, the aide got a text from a colleague, prosecutors say. "All of this Egypt stuff is very weird," the text read. "I've never seen anything like it." There's also a chance that two F.B.I. agents will be on the stand detailing how, where and why they began conducting surveillance of Senator Menendez, the former Democratic chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. A brand-new ballotAnother factor in the primary is far more arcane but no less potent. In March, a federal judge ordered New Jersey to re-format its Democratic primary ballot, and most voters will be seeing it for the first time. The new design abolishes a weapon that Democratic and Republican Party leaders have wielded in New Jersey for decades. It's known as "the county line," and it allowed party leaders to group their preferred primary candidates for every office together in one horizontal or vertical row, bestowing an often insurmountable advantage that made it harder for unendorsed challengers to break into politics. The senator's legal trouble changed that. Representative Andy Kim, a Democrat running for Menendez's Senate seat, sued to overturn the practice. At the time, the senator's main opponent was Tammy Murphy, the wife of Gov. Philip D. Murphy, who had lined up support from Democratic Party bosses who were both dependent on her husband's largess during his final two years in office and in control of the state's most highly prized county lines. Murphy dropped out of the race in late March, leaving Kim the odds-on favorite for the Senate seat. Days later, a federal judge in Trenton, N.J., declared the longstanding ballot design unconstitutional and ordered county clerks to group the Democratic candidates on Tuesday's ballot according to the office they are seeking. It's done like this in every other state, but the effect of the new design is a wild card in several New Jersey primary races, including Rob Menendez's. He has, nonetheless, been endorsed by the state's leading Democrats, including the governor, who bring with them a well-oiled party apparatus that many expect will have enough muscle to push him over the finish line. But a contest that in other years might have featured only a perfunctory examination of the issues has included several debates and candidate forums. Last month, Bhalla, 50, called that a victory for democracy, regardless of the outcome.
The year of the family affairIt's Jess again! It's not just the Menendezes who are navigating the complexities of family, politics and court dates. Right now, the political landscape is consumed with trials and family entanglements, adding a layer of family drama to the year's major story lines and pushing the archetypal role of supportive spouse, child or parent of a political figure into new territory. On Monday, the first lady, Jill Biden, appeared at the trial of Hunter Biden, who is accused of lying about his drug use in a federal firearms application in 2018. She spent the day — her 73rd birthday — in the courtroom's front row, listening closely to interviews with prospective jurors and giving her son a long hug during a break, my colleagues Glenn Thrush and Eileen Sullivan reported. Here's what they wrote: The presence of Mr. Biden's family and friends, including his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, his half sister, Ashley Biden, and his close friend Kevin Morris, served as a reminder that the trial was also a profound personal crisis for a family that has had more than its share of travails — in the middle of the most unforgiving presidential campaign in recent memory. Some members of Donald Trump's family offered moral support during his criminal trial — Trump's son Eric ramped up his presence in court as the trial went along, though the former president's wife, Melania, never attended — but they took on another role, too: aggressive political messaging. Eric, his wife, Lara, and his brother Donald Trump Jr. gave a fiery news conference during the trial, where they denounced the proceedings and solicited campaign donations. And over the weekend, Lara Trump, who is the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, appeared on television on Sunday to defend her father-in-law — and to impugn one of the rare Republicans who had called for the public to respect the verdict: former Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland. Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
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