Any wonder, then, that Mr. Kean is banking on the corruption issue as the mainstay of his campaign? In a series of television and radio ads, Mr. Kean has charged that Mr. Menendez is under federal investigation, although Mr. Menendez vehemently denies this. Mr. Kean's claim is based on reports that the U.S. attorney for the state of New Jersey subpoenaed the records from a nonprofit agency which leased a building from Mr. Menendez for $320,000, a sum Mr. Kean alleges was paid in return for federal grants arranged by Mr. Menendez.
War In New Jersey
~ BY DAVID TWERSKY
October 20, 2006
If you want to take the measure of the impact of October's events on the electoral fortunes of Democrats and Republicans, check out the New Jersey Senate race.
In a virtual tie through September, incumbent Bob Menendez has now pulled ahead by four to six points.
The surprise is that the GOP challenger, state Senator Kean, is even that close.
The campaign is more about atmospherics than issues. Despite his strong anti-Iraq war stance, Mr. Menendez has always been generally hawkish for a Democrat, in part because of his Cuban heritage. (New Jersey has the nation's second highest concentration of Cuban Americans after Florida.)
Mr. Kean is a GOP moderate in the mold of Christine Whitman and, more to the point, of his father, former governor (and 9/11 Commission co-chair) Tom Kean, Sr.
Mr. Kean's task would appear formidable. Not only is Mr. Bush increasingly unpopular in the Garden State, New Jersey has not elected a Republican senator since 1972.As in the nation, the winds fill the sails of New Jersey Democrats.
So Mr. Kean has tacked to the center (backing abortion rights and stem cell research) focusing on allegations of corruption among the Democrats.
Mr. Menendez was appointed, not elected, to the post (giving up a leadership position among House Democrats) last year after it was vacated by Jon Corzine. Mr. Corzine left the Senate to take up residence at Drumthwakett, the official home for New Jersey governors, filling the vacuum originally created by the resignation of Jim Mc-Greevey who confessed to having had a gay relationship with a senior staffer.
Mr. Corzine was wooed into state political life by the then senator, Bob Torricelli, who was forced to resign in the midst of a re-election campaign due to a gathering storm over corruption charges.
On top of all that you can throw in the scandal surrounding businessman Charles Kushner, a pillar of the Jewish community and a close associate of Messrs. Torricelli, McGreevey, and Corzine.
Any wonder, then, that Mr. Kean is banking on the corruption issue as the mainstay of his campaign? In a series of television and radio ads, Mr. Kean has charged that Mr. Menendez is under federal investigation, although Mr. Menendez vehemently denies this. Mr. Kean's claim is based on reports that the U.S. attorney for the state of New Jersey subpoenaed the records from a nonprofit agency which leased a building from Mr. Menendez for $320,000, a sum Mr. Kean alleges was paid in return for federal grants arranged by Mr. Menendez.
Mr. Menendez is also fighting to distance himself from an old ally, Donald Scarinci, caught on tape invoking Mr. Menendez's name while apparently trying to micromanage county contracts and patronage.
The real problem for Mr. Menendez is that he must answer for all of the corruption linked to his party, and that he hails from Union County, a place famously associated in the public mind with corruption.
Public officials from Union County must overcome an especially difficult burden.
"When I die, bury me in Jersey City so I can stay active in Democratic Party politics," former governor Brendan Byrne (a Democrat) regularly jokes at New Jersey political gatherings
Mr. Menendez is running hard against the Iraq war (he calls Mr. Kean "pro war pro Bush") and favors a phased withdrawal of American troops over the next year.
Last summer, Mr. Menendez was one of only 13 senators to vote for the Feingold-Kerry bill to begin withdrawing American troops from Iraq now and have most out by July 1, 2007.
Mr. Kean is critical of the management of the war, but places a greater emphasis on what Iraq might be like following an American departure.
He says he agrees "with Senator McCain's assessment that ‘we have made serious mistakes' in Iraq," and opposes a timetable for withdrawal. Again, quoting from Senator McCain, Mr. Kean says, "Draw downs must be based on conditions in-country, not an arbitrary deadline rooted in our domestic politics."
Only on two issues -- support for Israel and the tax cuts -- was Mr. Kean proud to associate himself with President Bush. Otherwise he hitches his wagon to Senator Mc-Cain's star, and promotes himself as someone who, in contrast to his rival, would be able to reach across the partisan aisle to find centrist solutions.
Mr. Kean said he would vote to confirm John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, while Mr. Menendez said he opposed Mr. Bolton on the grounds that he was "tough, but not smart."
Both parties pay close attention to Jewish voters. Jews constitute an estimated 5 plus percent of the total population of over eight million. Since Jewish voter turnout tends to be higher than that of their non-Jewish neighbors, the Jewish percentage of the actual electorate is even more significant.
What this has meant for Democrats is that they must, in seeking statewide office, retain the allegiance of the great majority of Jewish voters. According to exit polls by the Zogby group commissioned by the New Jersey Jewish News during the 1990s, the highest Jewish vote for a Republican went to Christine Whitman in the 1996 gubernatorial race when she narrowly defeated Jim Mc-Greevey.
The incumbent governor, Ms. Whitman garnered just over 40% of the Jewish vote. The increase of around eight percentage points from her first run for governor proved to be decisive because many conservative and anti-abortion rights voters defected from the GOP to the candidates of the Conservative and Libertarian parties.
Put simply, Ms. Whitman's margin of victory was smaller than the increase in the number of Jewish voters she had attracted. (To get an idea how this was reported in the mainstream, here is part of a post-election analysis by Stuart Rothenberg: "Whitman fashioned a very tenuous coalition of mainstream Republicans and Democrats to defeat McGreevey, with the governor winning one out of every five Democrats who cast votes."
When it comes to Jews, considered a core constituency, Democrats won't settle for a 60% showing. So the entire Democratic party establishment of Essex County assembled at the debate, including the County executive and the sherriff, a Jewish member of the county board of freeholders, and the state's senior senator, Frank Lautenberg.
On Wednesday evening, the two candidates appeared sequentially at a "candidates' forum organized by the Jewish community.They answered questions posed by a panel of three (among them, your intrepid reporter) and an audience of several hundred.
The candidates largely agreed on Iran (Mr. Menendez said that "at the end of the day, I am opposed to taking any option off the table,") as well as on the need to stand firmly behind Israel, and to press Hamas to abandon terrorism and recognize the Jewish state. But they differed on their assessment of the Bush administration's record with regard to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Mr. Menendez said Mr. Bush should have continued the "constant engagement" in the peace process which characterized the Clinton administration. Mr. Kean was less optimistic about the prospects for any diplomatic movement barring a significant shift in Palestinian thinking.
Mr. Twersky is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.
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