It’s getting worse for Bob Menendez

It’s getting worse for Bob Menendez


It wasn’t the best weekend for Bob Menendez. On Saturday, a New York Times editorial called on the New Jersey senator to hand in his Foreign Relations Committee gavel while the Senate ethics committee investigates whether he exerted improper influence to help one of his top donors. On Sunday, his home state newspaper, the Star-Ledger, provided an exhaustive history of Menendez’s two-decade relationship with the donor, Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen, concluding that “when Melgen acts, Menendez reacts.” And this morning, the Times is reporting new details about the specific actions Menendez has taken on behalf of his benefactor.




There’s no smoking gun in the Star-Ledger report, but it details several instances in which an official action by Menendez on Melgen’s behalf was followed by a hefty donation from Melgen to a Menendez-aligned campaign committee. All told, according to the paper, Melgen and his family members have given $50,000 to Menendez over the last two decades and far more to groups that have advanced Menendez’s political interests — $700,000 last year to a super PAC designed to help Democratic incumbents who (like Menendez) were up for reelection in 2012, and over $100,000 last year to county Democratic organizations in New Jersey, which played a major role in turning out the vote for a ticket that Menendez was part of.