What’s up with Bob?

Jim Testa of Jersey Beat offers a pretty good summary of the failings of the Menendez campaign this year — in a senate race that he should have been winning (in the polls, anyway) by 10 points. I mean this is a so-called blue state, right? And there is a concensus that George Bush is doing a bad job and that his war is a debacle and Tom Kean still supports it — and yet Sen. Menendez has been unable to take advantage.

There always were some questions about Menendez — about his name recognition, about his connections to Hudson County (a canard that shouldn’t have been an issue), about the bodies he’s left strewn across the political landscape (they play rough in his neck of the woods). I had been hoping for someone like state Sen. Nia Gill, a politician who is willing to battle the entrenched elite, or U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, a rather solid progressive. Menendez is reliably liberal — aside from his stance on Cuba and some security issues — but there were always those nagging doubts.

I just hope this is not something that Gov. Jon Corzine — who picked him to fill out the unexpired seat partly because he thought he was the man most likely to retain the seat against a well-financed opponent — will live to regret.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet