politics

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and the leader of the state Democratic Party on Friday called on Sen. Bob Menendez to resign, hours after federal prosecutors indicted him on bribery allegations.

“The allegations in the indictment against Senator Menendez and four other defendants are deeply disturbing. These are serious charges that implicate national security and the integrity of our criminal justice system,” Murphy said in a statement. “The alleged facts are so serious that they compromise the ability of Senator Menendez to effectively represent the people of our state. Therefore, I am calling for his immediate resignation.”

Democratic State Committee Chair LeRoy Jones Jr. also said Menendez should resign “to make sure that our party is able to keep its focus on the critical upcoming state legislative elections in November.”

Menendez is up for reelection in 2024. He has said he would seek another term and struck a defiant tone in a statement responding to the allegations against him.

Original story:

The explosive indictment of Sen. Bob Menendez has forced an urgent decision on New Jersey Democrats: Stick with a powerful senator who’s survived corruption ordeals before and is known for punishing disloyalty, or cut their losses and protect what should be a safe Democratic seat.

A year before Menendez is up for reelection, they’re leaning hard towards the latter.

While Democrats stay publicly silent, interviews with half a dozen well-placed Democratic operatives, advisers and staffers show a party stunned by the level of alleged corruption and hard-pressed to imagine a scenario in which the party backs Menendez for another term. But the fact that no one was willing to criticize him on the record in the face of such damning allegations may be reason to question whether state Democrats will ultimately force a reckoning with Menendez over his political future.

The allegations involving Egyptian arms sales and the passing on of sensitive information to foreign sources in particular caught them off guard and have left them privately frustrated that a senator who already imperiled a safe seat in 2018 over corruption allegations would now put them in an even worse position.

Democrats figured there would be new developments in the Menendez investigation, but the charges are far more serious than any of them anticipated.

“Democrats should call for his resignation. If this was a high-ranking Republican, they’d be lining up to do that like it was a Springsteen concert,” said one top Democratic congressional staffer from the New Jersey delegation. “This is not what happened a few years ago. The stuff in here is sickening. You couldn’t dream this up to be on an FX show — that’s how detailed is.”

The staffer, like party insiders and leaders interviewed for this story, was granted anonymity when speaking about the fluid situation and Democratic support for the notoriously-vindictive Menendez, who after surviving a 2017 corruption trial vowed that he would not forget “those who were digging my political grave.”

Time is not on the side of the state party: The 2024 election is already taking shape and Democratic Party leaders do not want to see a New Jersey Senate seat flip to Republicans for the first time since 1972.

The lack of immediate support by New Jersey Democrats for Menendez’s reelection was obvious Friday and starkly contrasted with party reaction after his last indictment.

Following Menendez’s April 2015 indictment that ultimately ended in a mistrial, the senator had the vast majority of the state party behind him. His campaign website immediately featured an “I stand with Bob” logo. Democratic politicians lined up to voice their support, most notably Sen. Cory Booker.

“He’s been an invaluable resource and a mentor to me since I arrived in the Senate. Our system of justice is designed to be fair and impartial, and it presumes innocence before guilt. I won’t waver in my commitment to stand alongside my senior Senator to serve our great state,” Booker said at the time.

Booker’s office did not respond to messages seeking comment after Friday’s indictment.

Other Democrats were slow to publicly respond to Menendez’s indictment Friday, if at all. Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat who was attending Democratic Governors Association events in Jersey City Friday, canceled a speech he was to give at a Newark event honoring Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. He has yet to weigh in on the indictment, and some New Jersey Democratic leaders and operatives POLITICO spoke to said they were waiting to follow his lead.

Within two hours of the U.S. Attorney of the Southern District of New York announcing the indictment, just two New Jersey Democrats issued a statement of support of Menendez: the senator himself and his son, U.S. Rep. Rob Menendez.

Bob Menendez said prosecutors “misrepresented the normal work of Congressional offices” and alleged that “forces behind the scenes have repeatedly attempted to silence my voice and dig my political grave” — echoing the defiant statement he made immediately following his mistrial.

His son did as well, saying he’s seen “countless detractors who refuse to believe a son of immigrants from Hudson County could rise to be one of one hundred and yet he’s constantly proven them wrong.”

Nevertheless, the near-public silence from New Jersey Democrats spoke volumes, and some within the party were getting frustrated.

“This is horrifying. And anyone who doesn’t think it’s disqualifying, that’s a problem,” one influential Democratic operative told POLITICO after federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York unsealed the indictment.

The new indictment alleges Menendez and his wife took bribes in exchange for favors for the Egyptian government and a company it awarded a monopoly on Halal meat exports and attempted interference in state and federal criminal cases, is at least on the surface far more damning and easy to understand than the 2015 indictment.

It claims, among many other things, that Menendez allegedly disclosed to a co-defendant Wael Hana at a dinner that a U.S. government ban on sales of small arms and ammunition to Egypt has been lifted, which Hana passed on to the Egyptian official. It also alleges the senator and his wife, Nadine Arslanian, did favors for foreign interests and criminal defendants in exchange for gold bars, cash and even a Mercedes-Benz.

Photos in the latest indictment show gold bars and nearly half a million dollars of cash, some of it stuffed into clothing that bore the senator’s name.

“This is crazy. This is cash in envelopes, the gold bars,” said one Democratic adviser with connections to a major party leader.

In 2015, Menendez was indicted for allegedly seeking to benefit the interests of Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen, a close friend. In exchange, prosecutors alleged Melgen provided Menendez with political donations, lavish vacations in his Dominican villa and private jet flights.

But there was no smoking gun in the previous Menendez case, and the senator argued that he was doing favors for a friend — not in exchange for anything. The new indictment, on the other hand, features co-defendants who did not have the history of close friendship with Menendez, and numerous text messages from Menendez and his wife that prosecutors allege show evidence of bribery.

“Everyones wrapping their heads around it, but from what I’ve heard the consensus is that no one believes there’s going to be any willingness among party leadership to stand with him for reelection the way there was last time around,” the operative said.

Nobody POLITICO spoke with expected Menendez to resign, in part because of his defiant nature and public statements, but also because they believed he would have trouble raising money for his legal defense fund if he wasn’t in office.

New Jersey Republicans didn’t hesitate to offer scathing criticism of the senator. GOP state legislative candidates in several competitive districts that are holding elections this November issued statements calling on Menendez to resign and asking their Democratic opponents to do the same.

Christine Serrano Glassner, a Republican small town New Jersey mayor with ties to former President Donald Trump who launched her Senate campaign against Menendez on Monday, in a statement dubbed him “Gold Bar Bob.”

“The indictment of Sen. Menendez is a sad day for New Jersey, but not surprising. ‘Gold Bar Bob’ has been battling credible allegations of corruption throughout most of his time in office, all while being protected and enabled by his cronies and allies in Washington,” Serrano Glassner said.

Meanwhile, there have been signs of Menendez’s political vulnerability. In Menendez’s 2018 primary election, six months after his mistrial, Lisa McCormick, a little-known Democrat with no campaign funding or party support, won 38 percent of the vote against him. That was largely read as a protest vote against Menendez, who still managed to capitalize on anti-Trump sentiment to win a comfortable 11-point reelection in 2018. (Republicans haven’t won a U.S. Senate election in New Jersey since 1972.)

So far, only one Democratic candidate is challenging Menendez in the primary: Real estate lender Kyle Jasey, the son of a New Jersey state lawmaker. But there’s a deep bench of high-profile New Jersey Democrats who are running or positioning themselves to run for governor in 2025, including U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-11th Dist.), U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-5th Dist.), Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. State Democratic bosses, notorious for backroom deals, could look to one of them to replace Menendez on the ballot.