Menendez Seeks to Bury Image of a Shady Dealer

The word "complicated" hangs over Menendez's head like a thought balloon.

One on one, he's neatly coifed and studiously bland, a pug-nosed lawyer at ease with the arcana of trade policy and Iraq. He's the immigrant's son -- his parents grew up in Havana and fled the dictator Fulgencio Batista -- and a skilled infighter for a higher minimum wage and low-cost student loans, and a determined opponent of the war in Iraq.

On the stump, he's curiously diffident. He attended a Veterans Day breakfast in Cherry Hill, a hall thick with old vets speaking in the emphatic manner of the hard of hearing. Max Cleland, the former Georgia senator and Vietnam amputee, had flown to campaign for him. The old Georgia pol coached the candidate.

"Go ahead, Bobby," Cleland whispers. "Push my wheelchair out there."

Menendez tends to step on his own applause lines. One vet after another ambles up to shake Menendez's hand but the candidate's handshake is as fleeting as his attention.

You might not guess that politics has been Menendez's chosen -- and highly successful -- calling since he ran for school board at the age of 19. He grew up in a tenement in Union City, a working-class immigrant city that hangs like a vine to the cliffs of the Palisades overlooking the Hudson River. The city sits in Hudson County, which for more than a century has exemplified a style of politics known as Early Feudal.

As Rep. Rodney P. Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) recently explained to the Record of Hackensack: "You don't take prisoners in Hudson County, you shoot them."

Another piece of the county's political DNA was laid down by Frank Hague, mayor of Jersey City from 1917 to 1947. He had a desk constructed with a lap drawer so visitors might deposit charitable envelopes of cash. Hague's salary never exceeded $8,000; his net worth at the time of his death was $10 million.

Menendez' first job came with William V. Musto, the intermittently reformist mayor of Union City. Later Menendez, who wore a bulletproof vest during this time, testified that Musto took bribes. Musto was convicted, and then he was reelected the day after he was sentenced.

Menendez has put in place mayors of Jersey City and Union City -- and upended the same men. But he recoils at any notion he's a boss. "Tom Kean rises to the top of his county machine with no experience and it's 'leadership,' " Menendez says in that professorial manner. "But we pick a candidate here in Hudson County and it's bossism. That's very outdated."

It must be said, however, that Hudson County politics retain a high entertainment value. Robert Janiszewski, the former county executive of Hudson County was forced to go into the witness protection program in 2001 after it was revealed he had worn an FBI wire. Janiszewski was sentenced to 41 months but in prison he's resurfaced as a pen-pal adviser to Kean's campaign.

Menendez frowns.

" In that case , the history of Frank Hague lives. But that history is not reality for the rest of us."