For a kid who grew up in working class Union City, N.J., Robert Menendez sure has made it far in the world.
From Cuba to Iran, Sen. Menendez (D-N.J.) has been one of the top Democratic voices pushing a muscular foreign policy, front and center on the leading issues of the day.
Following in the wake of Vice President Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry, Menendez secured the chairman’s gavel at the Foreign Relations Committee two years ago and became a fixture on the Sunday political shows, making 23 appearances in 2013 and 2014.
“I am not intimidated by anyone,” Menendez told a cheering crowd at the American Israel Public Affairs conference Monday, describing his push to toughen sanctions against Iran despite objections from the Obama administration
Menendez was in Newark by Friday night, defending himself against reports that the Justice Department would soon file corruption charges against him on suspicion that the 22-year veteran of Congress received gifts in exchange for official favors from a Florida eye doctor.
Menendez has a reputation a a bare-knuckled, political street fighter and has shown no interest in backing down from this legal fight. In a statement Friday night, he pledged to stay in office. “Anyone who knows me, knows that I fight for the things that I believe are important,” he said.
That approach, in effect, takes him back to his roots.
With his term not up until 2018, Menendez plans to fight the charges over many months or years, hoping for exoneration early enough to allow him to seek another term. If he’s convicted and must leave office, an interim senator would be appointed, but state law calls for a special election for a replacement within a few months.
Menendez, 61, always wore his ambition on his sleeve. At the age of 20, while attending St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, he won a seat on the Union City school board. In the early 1980s, Menendez turned on his mentor, Mayor William Musto, amid corruption allegations. By 1986, he ousted him to become Union City mayor.
He won a House seat in 1992, and almost immediately began eyeing the Senate. When Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) announced his retirement in 1996, Menendez made moves but backed away to a more senior colleague. Four years later, when Frank Lautenberg retired, party leaders pushed Menendez aside in favor of Wall Street titan Jon Corzine.
Instead, Menendez focused on the House leadership ladder. In January 1999, he became vice-chairman of the House Democratic caucus. A star on the rise, Vice President Al Gore made sure to attend his party. Nine months later, Menendez turned his back on his home state and endorsed Gore for president, rejecting Bradley’s bid for the 2000 Democratic nomination.
He won the race for caucus chairman by a single vote in late 2002, when party leaders allowed the vote of a candidate, Mike Feeley, who was still involved in a contested election recount in Colorado. Feeley voted for Menendez but never served in Congress because he lost the recount.
As the third ranking House Democrat, Menendez became the highest profile Latino in Congress. He was a prolific fundraiser with deep connections to K Street — in a five-year stretch last decade his political committees spent more than $80,000 for frequent meals at the Morton’s Steakhouse on Connecticut Avenue.
All the while he played a key role as party boss in Hudson County, helping pave the way for Corzine’s run for governor in 2005. In one of his first acts as governor, Corzine appointed Menendez to succeed him in the Senate. In November 2006, he won a full term by defeating New Jersey political royalty, state Sen. Tom Kean Jr. (R), the son of the popular former governor.
That race exposed the first corruption investigation against Menendez, when just weeks before the election the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Chris Christie, began investigating a rental property deal of the senator’s.
His win, he said in his victory speech, showed that voters had “rejected the politics of personal destruction.”
The case faded away, but Democrats accused Christie of trying to raise his political profile in advance of his successful run for governor in 2009.
Menendez made quick moves to win leadership positions in the Senate. In the 2010 election cycle, he chaired the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, raising tens of millions of dollars to defend the party’s incumbents in a brutal political environment.
When Kerry became Secretary of State, Menendez finally had a big prize: the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee.
At that moment, a secret source began telling the FBI about Menendez’s connection to the Florida doctor, who was a friend and donor who frequently flew the senator to his resort in the Dominican Republic.
Paul Kane covers Congress and politics for the Washington Post.
Mike DeBonis covers Congress and national politics for The Washington Post. He previously covered D.C. politics and government from 2007 to 2015.
0 comments:
Post a Comment