Tuesday’s primary in New Jersey will show whether Rep. Rob Menendez, after just 17 months in Congress, has built enough goodwill with fellow Democrats to overcome two political bombshells.
The freshman no longer has the benefit of a favorable position on the primary election ballot after a successful lawsuit ended a system that benefited party-endorsed candidates. On top of that, his father, Sen. Bob Menendez, was indicted on corruption charges, and the trial has overlapped with the early voting period and primary election day.
Menendez is being challenged by a fellow Democrat with the resources to introduce himself throughout the 8th District, making that primary one of this week’s cliff-hangers.
The senior Menendez isn’t on the Democratic ballot, though he has held out the possibility of running as an independent. That seat isn’t viewed as one that could make a difference in determining which party will be in control of Congress next year. Senate nominees being chosen Tuesday in Montana and New Mexico have a greater shot at a partisan flip.
Political parties also will firm up their November lineups in Iowa and South Dakota.
In New Jersey, Rep. Menendez is trying to win renomination over Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla, who’s “better financed than any first-time candidate that we’ve had in New Jersey,” Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics, said in an interview.
Bhalla, New Jersey’s first Sikh mayor, raised more than $2 million for the primary, much of it from the Sikh community across the nation.
At a debate hosted by the New Jersey Globe, the challenger described the bribery trial as “the elephant in the room” and accused the son of being “not concerned about the fact that his father’s being accused of being a foreign agent for the government of Egypt.”
Bob Menendez Bribery Trial Over Gold Bars, Cash Begins
Menendez said he’s focused on serving his district and Bhalla is fixated on his father. He defended his constituent-services operation and touted his support for local infrastructure funding, abortion and immigrant rights, and gun-safety measures.
“We are obsessive about serving our residents, serving our constituents,” Menendez said at the debate.
The Democratic primary is the election that matters in the 8th District, a Hispanic-majority area dominated by Hudson County near New York City. Rep. Menendez is the only Hispanic member of New Jersey’s 12-member House delegation.
The primary will use a new ballot design that groups candidates by the office they’re seeking. The previous ballot layout gave a decided edge to candidates preferred by county political bosses. Sen. Menendez and his allies in the Hudson County Democratic Party were instrumental in clearing a path for the younger Menendez to secure the party nomination in 2022.
Tuesday’s primary will show “whether or not he can hold on in the face of not just his father’s legal problems, but also the end of the county line, which is something that really helped propel him in the first place,” Rasmussen said.
Senate Situation
The senator pleaded not guilty but has little chance of victory if he runs as an independent, something he could do by submitting just 800 voter signatures by Tuesday, though he could withdraw as late as Aug. 16.
Rep. Andy Kim (D) is the runaway favorite to become his successor, having jumped in immediately after the indictment last September and pushed the lawsuit that upended the ballot designs.
On the Republican side, Donald Trump endorsed Christine Serrano Glassner, the mayor of Mendham Borough in Morris County, over other Republican primary contenders including Curtis Bashaw, a hotelier and real estate developer. Either would be a distinct underdog against Kim.
“New Jersey has not elected a Republican to the United States Senate since 1972,” Ben Dworkin, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship at Rowan University, said in an interview. “I don’t think anybody expects that to change this year.”
Open Seat
With Kim running for Senate, state Reps. Herb Conaway and Carol Murphy are the leading Democrats to succeed him in the Democratic-friendly 3rd District. Conaway, a physician and Air Force veteran who’s been in the legislature since 1998, would be the the first Black person to represent southern New Jersey in Congress. Murphy would be the first woman to serve that region in Congress.
Ex-Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D), who died April 24, was unopposed in the primary in the northern 10th District. Democratic leaders will select a replacement nominee after the July 16 special primary that will determine a nominee to fill the remainder of Payne’s unexpired term. The district is solidly Democratic.
The most competitive New Jersey district in November, and perhaps the only one, is the north-central 7th, where Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R) is seeking re-election for the first time in a district that preferred Joe Biden to Trump in 2020. Sue Altman, who formerly led New Jersey’s leftist Working Families Party, is unopposed in the primary.
Iowa
Democrats are trying to prevent a Republican sweep of Iowa’s four congressional districts for the second straight election.
Their top takeover target may be the 3rd District, a competitive area in and around Des Moines that broke about evenly between Trump and Biden in 2020. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee backed Lanon Baccam, an Army veteran and former Agriculture Department official, to oppose one-term Rep. Zach Nunn (R).
In the 1st District, which takes in southeastern Iowa, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R) has nominal primary opposition and is headed to a rematch with Democrat Christina Bohannan, a former state representative and law professor who lost to Miller-Meeks by 7 points in 2022.
Montana
Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chair Jon Tester (D) and businessman Tim Sheehy (R), a former Navy SEAL, are favored to win their primaries in a state that will be pivotal to determining control of the closely divided Senate. Republican officials in Washington and Montana coalesced around Sheehy early and boxed out Rep. Matt Rosendale (R), who lost to Tester in 2018.
Tester will need ample ticket-splitters as he shares a November ballot with Biden, who lost Montana by 16 percentage points in the 2020 election.
Rep. Ryan Zinke (R) is headed for a rematch with Monica Tranel (D), a lawyer and former Olympic rower who’s unopposed in her primary. Zinke, who was Trump’s first interior secretary, beat Tranel by 3 percentage points in 2022 in the 1st District, the less Republican-leaning of Montana’s two districts.
In the 2nd District, covering the eastern two-thirds of the state, the winner of a nine-candidate Republican primary will be a shoo-in to succeed Rosendale. Ex-Rep. Denny Rehberg, who represented Montana in the House from 2001 to 2013, is seeking a return to Congress a dozen years after he lost to Tester. Rehberg’s competitors include Montana Auditor Troy Downing and state schools superintendent Elsie Arntzen, who led the field in fundraising after partially self-financing their campaigns.
New Mexico
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D), who’s seeking a third term, and Nella Domenici (R), a former chief financial officer of hedge fund giant Bridgewater Associates, are unopposed in the primary.
Nonpartisan political analysts, including the Cook Report with Amy Walter and Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales, rate the race as “solid” Democratic. Republican strategists say they can seriously compete in a state where they last won a Senate election in 2002, when Domenici’s father, the late Pete Domenici, won his sixth term. Biden carried New Mexico in 2020 by 11 percentage points.
In the 2nd District, Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D) will face ex-Rep. Yvette Herrell (R) in a rematch of a 2022 race Vasquez won by less than 1 point after state Democratic legislators redrew the district more to their advantage.
South Dakota
At-large Rep. Dusty Johnson (R), the chair of the Republican Main Street Caucus of self-described “pragmatic conservatives,” is unopposed in the primary two years after he won 59%-41% against a hard-right challenger.