Embattled Menendez holds on to senate seat
TRENTON >> New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez on Tuesday fended off his wealthy Republican challenger and a barrage of ads about his tossed-out corruption charges to win re-election.
Menendez, 64, defeated Republican Bob Hugin after a grueling and often ugly campaign to win a third term.
Polls showed Hugin, 64, and Menendez much closer than expected in overwhelmingly Democratic New Jersey.
Hugin tapped his deep pockets for at least $27.5 million and spent on TV ads attacking Menendez over the 2017 trial on charges that he helped a friend with Medicare billing in exchange for lavish gifts.
The charges were dropped this year after a mistrial. Menendez had always denied wrongdoing, but the Senate Ethics Committee admonished him and concluded that he violated the law.
He apologized to the public in a TV interview and in the race’s only debate in the weeks before the election.
The race was particularly significant because Democrats sought to defend 26 seats, including 10 incumbents running in states that President Donald Trump won in 2016.
The contest was closer than expected in part because of the 2015 corruption indictment against Menendez in which federal prosecutors charged that he accepted lavish gifts from a Florida eye doctor who is his friend in exchange for helping him with a Medicare billing issue. The trial ended in a mistrial in 2017, and prosecutors dropped the charges in 2018.
Hugin, though, concentrated on scandalous details in the trial, calling Menendez untrustworthy and highlighting a Senate Ethics Committee admonition letter that took him to task. The ethics panel concluded that Menendez’s actions “reflected discredit upon the Senate.”
Menendez defended himself by pointing to votes for women’s rights and on health care. He also attacked Hugin over his time at Celgene, which settled for $280 million on Hugin’s watch in 2017 over allegations it promoted cancer drugs that were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
The company didn’t admit liability, and Hugin points to the life-saving drugs that the company makes for cancer patients. The race was ugly at times. Hugin ran an ad raising unsubstantiated claims stemming from 2012 that Menendez patronized underage prostitutes as part of his friendship with the co-defendant in the 2017 trial. Menendez called them “lies.”
But the barrage of negative ads led to outside Democratic groups pouring money into the race. Senate Majority PAC, for example, said in the final weeks of the campaign that it was spending $3 million on TV ads.
President Donald Trump seemed to be a factor in the campaign. Menendez raised him as a boogeyman and said Hugin would effectively be a rubber stamp for him in Washington.
Hugin, who contributed to Trump’s campaign and appeared at the White House for a roundtable talk about drug prices alongside Trump, largely tried to keep his distance. He said he would be an independent voice for the state.
New Jersey has not elected a Republican to the Senate since 1972.