Menendez Looks to His Base

Related Content

Related Stories

• Open-Seat Woes: GOP Asks, ‘Who’s to Blame?’
• Parties Plot Final Strategy

Print

E-Mail

Reprints

Text Size

Latest News

• Lincoln’s Saturday Timing Puzzles Colleagues
• Senate Democrats Score Major Victory
• Republicans Continue to Challenge Health Bill
• Greg Ball Drops Out of New York Race
• Democrats Line Up 60 Votes to Start Debate

By contrast, Kean is trying to make the election about Menendez, simultaneously touting his moderate views and where he differs with Bush, including his call for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign.

Corruption Issue Dogs Incumbent

In the last two weeks, Kean has taken to hammering Menendez on taxes to try to capitalize on New Jerseyans’ distaste with their high level of taxation. But Kean’s ads and rhetoric have mostly played up the Senator’s connection to individuals with shady pasts and as well as supposed instances of his ethically questionable behavior.

“We’ve got an opponent who’s under federal criminal investigation, we’ve got a population in the state of New Jersey that knows that they’re over-taxed, and that corruption has a role to play in the level of the tax burden, so I feel very, very good,” is how Kean put it in an interview on Thursday, just before walking the six block-long Halloween parade in Ocean City.

And that was Kean being nice. After offering a lengthy and detailed dispute to the charge that a vote for Kean is a vote for Bush, Kean got back to the subject of Menendez and corruption, which when it broke in the New Jersey media just after Labor Day helped vault the Republican into, or close, to the lead in many polls.

“Bob Menendez has not only embraced the broken system down in Washington, D.C., he has been a part of the broken system in New Jersey, including being a political boss in his home county of Hudson, steering contracts, as reported by The New York Times, to former aides and lobbyists, steering taxpayer monies to the tune of $320,000 into his own pocket, personally enriching himself off of public service,” Kean said.

The Menendez campaign disputes Kean’s characterization of the federal probe, which is examining the Senator’s connection to a nonprofit that received federal funds while renting space in a building he used to own. Still, its likely the allegations hurt the Democrat, as he makes it a point to mention in many speeches that he once wore a bulletproof vest after testifying against his former political mentor in a corruption trial.

So Menendez has a bevy of Democratic heavyweights on his campaign schedule, all in an attempt to make sure the base turns out on Election Day. Former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) are on the schedule for the final week, with former Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.) set to appear with Menendez today at a breakfast with veterans in Cherry Hill.

It is also likely that he’ll find himself rallying with the local Democrats who help run the Democratic turnout machine on the ground, as he did last week when he was joined by the black mayors in East Orange, just outside of Newark.

Menendez hints that he is considering taking legal action against Kean for slander following the campaign, saying during his his speech on Thursday at Rider, and again to reporters after his remarks, that he would address the corruption charges being leveled by Kean after the election.

“We’re considering a wide range of options,” Menendez said. “But we’ll pursue them after the election.”