Menendez to fundraise for Senate Dems in 2020

With his seat secure for another six years, U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez is preparing to turn his attention toward his Democratic colleagues elsewhere in the nation.

“We’re going to do our fair share of helping senate candidates, as many of them helped me, primarily through my leadership PAC,” Menendez said after an unrelated press conference Monday. “We will do that, of course, and we will also help certain house candidates along the way.”

If Democrats can pick up four Senate seats next year — or three, if they win the White House — Menendez would be in line to regain the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Between 2009 and 2011, Menendez served as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Now that he’s overcome an election challenge from former Celgene CEO Bob Hugin, a self-funder that pumped $36 million of his own money into the campaign, Menendez is likely feeling safe, but Democrats from elsewhere in the country backed him financially in the last leg of his race against Hugin.

That aid included millions of dollars in independent expenditures by a super PAC with ties to Democratic leadership in the senate.