By Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 3, 2006
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."
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."
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