If Bob Menendez insists on seeking re-election in 2024 despite being under indictment, he’ll need to do so without the support of the Democratic Party establishment that has backed him for parts of the last five decades.
To win, he’d need to mount a mostly off-the-line campaign in the June primary election, something the former party boss — Menendez served as Hudson County Democratic chairman while serving as a congressman – had previously been unaccustomed to.
So far, Menendez has faced calls from 13 of New Jersey’s 21 Democratic county chairs to resign his seat, along with Gov. Phil Muphy and the state’s Democratic legislative leaders.
Six of the eight chairs that have been silent on Menendez come from South Jersey, where Menendez has close ties with party leaders. Their quietness doesn’t translate into political support; key South Jersey Democratic leaders, including Rep. Donald Norcross (D-Camden) and Assembly Majority Leader Louis Greenwald (D-Voorhees), were among a large number of Democrats calling for Menendez to step down.
In Hudson County, where Menendez has held public office since the 1980s, Democratic County Chairman Anthony Vainieri told Politico on Saturday that Menendez “is like a rock star.”
“We have a lot of people who admire him and look up to him and support him. I haven’t received any phone calls from any constituents yet asking for his resignation,” Vainieri told them. “We have a large Hispanic community in [the] county, and they love him.”
But Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, a candidate for the 2025 Democratic gubernatorial nomination, disputed that.
“There isn’t support here that is any different than support elsewhere in New Jersey, meaning there isn’t a route to the county lining up here on his behalf. Zero chance,” Fulop said in a social media post. “The senator has plenty of long relationships in New Jersey, but I wouldn’t conflate his personal relationships growing up with support electorally.”
A Menendez off-the-line campaign in Hudson, Essex, and Union counties puts the senator’s son in an untenable position: does freshman Rep. Robert J. Menendez (D-Jersey City) run with his father or with his father’s opponent?
The massive calls for his resignation over the last few days starkly contrast to Menendez’s 2015 indictment, when top Democrats stood by him. When he ran for re-election in 2018, after a jury failed to convict him, no big-name Democrat emerged as a primary opponent.
Still, Menendez could win a primary if the field of candidates running against him – so far it’s Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) and former Newark school board member Larry Hamm – grows large enough. When Gov. Brendan Byrne sought re-election in 1977, he won the Democratic primary with 30.3% of the vote in a field of ten challengers, including two congressmen, a state senator, and a former member of his own cabinet.
Only one incumbent U.S. Senator from New Jersey has lost a primary: Clifford Case, a liberal Republican, lost his party’s nomination for a fourth term in 1978 against a conservative challenger.
The last sitting U.S. Senator to be dumped by party leaders was Albert Hawkes, a Republican who didn’t seek a second term in 1948 after Republican bosses declined to support him.
Menendez has rebuffed calls for his resignation.
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