Menendez Seeks to Bury Image of a Shady Dealer

ATLANTIC CITY -- A balding labor chieftain explains why his hard-hats should vote for the plump candidate who stands here in a muddy construction site dressed in a white knit cotton shirt, a pinstriped suit, loafers and a perfectly knotted tie.

"Bobby Menendez is a fighter !" Billy Mullen bellows at his guys on this balmy autumnal day. "He's been in the gutter , he's rolled around down there his whole life . . ." The hard-hats do much appreciative thumping of hands and waving of fists.

Sen. Robert Menendez, a Democrat, gives a pained smile suggestive of intestinal discomfort. He rarely answers to "Bobby." And there's a very good likelihood -- no, let's make it a certainty -- that he is not enamored of this particular compliment.

The notion that Menendez, 52, rolls in the gutter before lunch, that he is a political boss as expert in the manipulation of political IOUs and shivs as he is in the intricacies of trade policy, has trailed like a mutt after Menendez throughout his Senate campaign.

His opponent, Republican Tom Kean Jr., a semi-obscure state senator and the trust-fund scion of a multigenerational political powerhouse, cannot clear his throat without intoning that Menendez is "under federal investigation." There are, in Kean's telling, Menendez's questionable rental contract with a local not-for-profit, the pressure his advisers applied to get an ally hired at a local hospital, and so on and on.

Even if these charges prove true, it's not clear such behavior is illegal or disabling. In New Jersey the operating political philosophy is described as "pay to play," and the occasional indictment might be viewed as part of the life cycle of politics.

"We are a very, very nonjudgmental state," noted Clifford Zukin, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University. "Unless you are rich and can buy in from the outside, it takes a great deal of skill and toughness to rise up."

Still, the charges -- repeated in countless commercials -- take a cumulative effect. New Jersey has trended Democratic for years. But Menendez, who was appointed in January to fill the Senate seat vacated by Gov. Jon S. Corzine (D), stands a bare notch ahead of Kean in polls.

One public poll asked voters what jumps to their mind when they hear the candidates' names. Kean? He's the son of a former governor.

As for Menendez? The greatest number of poll respondents -- 21 percent -- say the words that come to mind are "corruption/crooked."

Menendez sits in the back of a coffee shop at the Borgata casino after his Atlantic City labor rally and wags his head. It's Halloween, and a waitress dressed as a giant Hershey's Kiss has just served coffee.

"In the end of the day, have all the negative ads taken effect? It's hurt." Menendez favors a softly wounded tone. "I didn't expect this."