GOP wants Dems to push senator out if convicted
Menendez goes on trial this week on corruption charges
Sen. Bob Menendez promised he will be cleared of charges of bribery and corruption at his trial that starts Wednesday, but Republicans launched a campaign to get his colleagues to pressure him to resign if convicted.
The Republican National Committee aimed at the New Jersey senator’s fellow Democrats, including Minority Leader Charles Schumer of New York; senators running for re-election in states that President Trump won last year; and those with potential aspirations for the presidency in
2020, such as Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Republicans want to make sure Menendez would not remain in office while awaiting sentencing or appealing his conviction because New Jersey’s Republican governor, Chris Christie, would get to name an acting senator if there was a vacancy before Christie’s term ends in mid-January.
That would give the GOP a
53rd seat in the Senate at least until the midterm elections are held in 2018. New Jersey has not elected a Republican to the Senate since 1972, and the Democrat vying to succeed Christie, Phil Murphy, had a lead of 27 percentage points over Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, the Republican nominee, in a poll in July.
If Menendez is convicted and refuses to leave office, the Constitution gives the Senate the power to remove him with a two-thirds vote — a 67-vote tally that would require 15 Democrats to join all
52 Republicans. The last New Jersey senator convicted of corruption in office, Harrison Williams, was convicted in May 1981 but did not resign until March
1982 as the Senate prepared to expel him.
The GOP pressure campaign includes ads on social media that highlight how Democrats, including then-senator Barack Obama of Illinois, said in 2008 that Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, needed to resign after he was convicted of corruption.
Stevens’ conviction was overturned before sentencing after a Justice Department investigation found prosecutorial misconduct.
For Menendez, Republicans set up a war room to track coverage of the trial and disseminate any potentially embarrassing details that emerge. The party will have “trackers” try to get senators in their home states to say whether they want Menendez to stay.
“Convicted felons can’t even vote in many parts of the country, but Democrats are going to let one keep voting in the United States Senate?” said Michael Ahrens, an RNC spokesman. “If Democrats don’t call for a convicted felon to resign immediately and instead force taxpayers to keep paying his salary, that’s a debate we’re ready to have.”
Menendez, 63, was accused in an indictment in 2015 of using his
“Convicted felons can’t even vote in many parts of the country, but Democrats are going to let one keep voting in the United States Senate?”
Michael Ahrens, Republican National Committee
office to benefit the interests of co-defendant and friend Salomon Melgen, 63, of North Palm Beach, Fla. Melgen, a wealthy ophthalmologist, allegedly paid bribes in the form of luxury travel, including flights on his private plane to his villa in a Dominican resort, and more than $700,000 in contributions to super PACs and political committees that helped Menendez get re-elected in 2012.