Menendez Looks to His Base

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“We have worked very hard on making sure we have the street operations in place that you’re going to need on Election Day,” Hughes said Friday at the senior center, after urging seniors in Ewing Township to support Menendez. “It takes a little bit of extra effort. And, quite frankly, there have not been the kind of resources that we have seen in the Corzine election and some of the elections before that.”

“But we’re making up for that with shoe leather,” Hughes continued, “and making sure we do our basic operations of get-out-the-vote.”

Menendez, appointed to the Senate by Corzine to fill the unexpired term the now-governor vacated to set up shop in Trenton, has led Kean in most polls taken this month, after trailing in several conducted in September.

But the Republican was buoyed Thursday by a New York Times/CBS survey that showed the candidates neck-and-neck, with Menendez at 40 percent and Kean at 39 percent. Additionally, a few other polls released in the last 10 days had Kean within 5 points or less of Menendez, who is making his first run for statewide office and was mostly unknown in New Jersey after spending 13 years representing the 13th district.

This being Menendez’s first statewide bid, and considering the fact that there are no state offices on the ballot — state elections in New Jersey occur in off years — it is unclear how “well-oiled” the Democratic turnout machine will be, said David Rebovich, the managing director of the Rider University Institute for New Jersey Politics.

One indicator will be how well the Democratic machine functions in the less affluent, urban counties of Camden, Essex and Hudson (Menendez’s home turf), which are home to a large number of black voters and where Democrats tend to accumulate large majorities.

Suburbs Are Key

The key to who wins, however, could lay with voters in the suburban counties of Bergen and Monmouth, and in particular those voters in the suburban swing county of Burlington. If they follow recent precedent and break for the Democrat, Menendez will win.

“The question is: Will the Kean name, and the Kean brand of politics, one that’s based on a sense of civility, bipartisanship, and moderate positions on policies — will enough of those suburbanites see Tom Kean Jr. as being in the same mold as his extremely popular father?” Rebovich said.

To win those voters, the candidates are following distinctly different paths.

Menendez is painting his opponent as wrong on key issues like the Iraq War; Menendez voted against authorizing it while in the House, while Kean said he would have voted for it. But more than that, Menendez’s strategy has been to make the election about President Bush, and portray Kean as a Bush ally on as many issues as possible while offering himself up as a way to stop the White House and change the direction of the country.

In fact, signs visible on telephone poles and lampposts throughout the state say simply: “Stop Bush, Vote Nov. 7.” The signs makes no mention of Kean or Menendez, but the message is clear.

It might be working.

Joe Regan, 43, who described herself as “pretty liberal” and likely to vote for Menendez, discussed her vote almost entirely in terms of voting against Bush, as opposed to voting for Menendez, although she acknowledged that she tends to agree with the Senator on the issues.

“I don’t like Bush’s politics, I have problems with the fact that we’re still in Iraq,” Regan, of Longport, said Thursday evening, while taking in the annual Ocean City Halloween Parade. “Do we need to be there? Do we need to spend our tax dollars in Iraq? I disagree with a lot of that. So you kind of hope that by leaning in this direction — liberal and staying with Democrats —” that the country’s Iraq policy will change.