 [NR] His Senate seat hinges on whom Garden State voters hate more: him or Trump.
This election is a tale of two chambers. In the House, Democrats are primed to make large gains, sweeping into a majority thanks to suburban voters who are sick of President Donald Trump’s antics. In the Senate, on the other hand, the Republicans appear to be in good shape, thanks to a highly favorable map that includes such GOP pickup opportunities as North Dakota, Missouri, Florida, and New Jersey.
Wait . . . New Jersey?
No, that is not a typo, nor is it a fever dream of a conservative deeply invested in the idea of keeping Chuck Schumer in the minority. New Jersey may very well be in play this year because the Democrats have renominated Senator Robert Menendez, easily the most crooked member of the upper chamber today, and one who must rank in the top tier through its whole history (which is really saying something!).
Last year, Menendez went on trial for corruption over his cozy relationship with Dr. Salomon Melgen, a Florida ophthalmologist who is himself serving a lengthy sentence for defrauding Medicare to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. The specifics of Menendez’s alleged crimes are too unseemly to be detailed on the e-pages of what is a family magazine. Suffice to say that he was accused of doing favors in government for Melgen in exchange for personal luxuries and kickbacks.
Menendez managed to escape the slammer thanks to a hung jury in his trial, and more generally the inevitable problem that prosecutors face when they take corruption cases to court: What is an innocent friendship in politics, and what is a quid pro quo? Menendez’s fellow senators, mind you, were not so epistemologically hamstrung. They can tell a crook when they see one, which is why he was "severely admonished" by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee and ordered to pay back the cash value of some of the gifts he accepted.
Even by the standards of New Jersey ‐ hardly the most ethical of state political systems ‐ Menendez’s defalcations are pretty eye-popping. If he were running for reelection in virtually any other state or any other cycle, he’d be deep in the hole. But this is New Jersey, where crooked pols go hand in hand with Springsteen anthems. And it is 2018, when voters appear to be less than enthusiastic about electing Republicans. 
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