Smiling at corruption
Smiling at corruption
The Democrats have failed all year to find a mid-term campaign theme, but it seems that the same thing is attached to all: listen to what we say; Ignore what we do
Nowhere is this more true than in the blue, blue New Jersey, where Senator Bob Menéndez is suddenly fighting. The businessman and Republican nominee Bob Hugin has spent months educating Garden State voters about Menéndez's adventures with a criminal now convicted. The more the voters learn, the more strict the career is. Recent public polls have given Mr. Menéndez a 6 or 7 point advantage, although a new Hugin internal poll affirms that the gap is now less than 2.
The Democrats are alarmed enough that the PAC of the majority of the Senate this week decided to divert a precious $ 3 million to reinforce Mr. Menéndez with television advertising. The decision is extraordinary, given the number of seats in the Senate that Democrats are already fighting to defend, many in the states President Trump led. But it's even more extraordinary for the statement: campaign theme, if you wish, the Democrats are launching with this ad purchase. Namely, do not believe us.
This is the party that claims to be running against a republican "culture of corruption." The Democrats highlighted the conviction of Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and introduced anti-corruption bills in Congress. The minority leader of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, in August, even gave her members a "set of tools" to talk about alleged GOP faults. They present the Trump White House as a mixture of the yakuza and a drug cartel.
However, here the Democrats are intervening on behalf of a single federal legislator who has been judged definitively by his colleagues as corrupt in recent years, for having abused his position, having disregarded the rules of ethics, for having "discredited" the Senate. A bipartisan letter from the Senate Ethics Committee in April "severely reprimanded" Mr. Menéndez, discovering that for six years he had "knowingly and repeatedly accepted gifts of significant value" from his close friend and donor from the Democratic Party, the ophthalmologist from Florida Salomon Melgen. The gifts included luxurious flights by private plane, evenings in hotels in Paris and free accommodation in a villa in the Dominican Republic, where Mr. Menéndez stayed not once or twice, but 19 times.
Throughout this, Mr. Menéndez was promoting the commercial interests of Dr. Melgen in Washington, pressuring a cabinet official about a Medicare billing dispute and supporting visa applications for brides abroad. of Dr. Melgen. Some people might call this a quid pro quo, and federal prosecutors did, obtaining an indictment against Mr. Menéndez in 2015. The charges were dropped after the Supreme Court toughened the rules to prove such cases. Dr. Melgen, however, was convicted last year of Medicare fraud and was sentenced to 17 years in federal prison.
A final poignant detail to add to this Democratic anti-corruption theme: Menéndez's indictment of 2015 stated that in 2012 a fundraiser for a powerful Democratic political team accepted two $ 300,000 contributions from Dr. Melgen's company , and then he used them for Menéndez's report. -election that year. The political suit? The majority of the Senate PAC, the group that spends millions to rescue Mr. Menéndez.
Leaving political expenses aside, Menéndez's Democratic colleagues have also shown that they are more than happy to tolerate corruption in their own ranks, at least if that means one more seat in the Senate. After the federals dropped the charges, the Democrats allowed Mr. Menéndez to regain his position as a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. They allowed him to maintain that job even after the Ethics Committee issued his four-page letter in which Mr. Menéndez was admonished.
After the federal indictment, minority leader Chuck Schumer praised Mr. Menéndez as "one of the best legislators in the Senate." New Jersey Senator Cory Booker offered unconditional support even after the Senate's admonition. The Democratic establishment of Garden State squeezed the only declared primary challenger of Menéndez, Michael Starr Hopkins, who failed to raise real money from any agent of the Democratic power. Those ideas, on the other hand, backed Mr. Menéndez for re-election.
Hugin's campaign eliminated another difficult announcement last week, referencing a 2015 federal court file indicating that the government had "presented specific and corroborated allegations that the defendants Menéndez and Melgen had had sex with prostitutes. minors in the Dominican Republic. " However, it is remarkable to see the Democrats and their media allies close ranks to insist that there is a high level of proof for such serious claims. This in the light of her uncorroborated claims against Judge Brett Kavanaugh, as well as Mr. Mendendez's own moral complaints that we live in a world in which a woman can "tell the truth to power about a sexual assault", but "They will not believe it." . "
And with that, we go back to the Democrats theme for 2018. You can hear what they say. Or you can believe in your own eyes.
Write to kim@wsj.com.
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