Democrats face costly battle to secure New Jersey Senate vote

For Democrats, Tuesday’s New Jersey US Senate election should have been a breeze.

Bob Menendez, 64, has held the seat for more than a decade as a powerful force in Washington, while representing a state that has not sent a Republican to the US Senate in 46 years.

But June’s Democratic nominating contest exposed his potential weakness: a virtually unknown challenger who spent zero dollars in the race got almost 40% of the vote.

He is now locked in a tough and expensive race with former pharmaceutical executive Bob Hugin, a Republican who has hammered Menendez as weak on ethics after the longserving senator’s federal corruption trial in 2017.

New Jersey’s other Democratic US senator, Cory Booker, seen as a potential 2020 White House contender, spent Sunday crisscrossing the state alongside Menendez, telling voters that re-electing his colleague would help block Republican President Donald Trump’s agenda.

The contest is crucial to the Democrats’ slim hopes of taking control of the Senate, which depend on winning two Republican-held seats while defending 10 Senate seats in states that Trump won in 2016.

A loss in New Jersey, a Democratic bastion in the US Northeast, could be a fatal blow to those hopes.

Democrats remain favour ites to win the 23 seats they need to capture the US House of Representatives.

Menendez’s corruption trial ended in November 2017 when the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict.

US prosecutors then dropped the case, but Menendez was censured by a Senate committee for accepting gifts from a wealthy longtime friend in exchange for official favours.

Hugin has poured $36m (R516m) of his own money into his campaign, airing a barrage of television commercials attacking Menendez. –