By: Scott Morgan
If nothing else, the campaign being waged by the two major-party candidates for the U.S. Senate from New Jersey has now all but guaranteed that whoever triumphs will be a disrespected, ineffective and generally unpopular officeholder.
Because the only thing either of the candidates Republican Thomas Kean Jr. and Democrat Robert Menendez seems to care about is destroying the credibility and reputation of his opponent. This means the one who emerges bloody but victorious in next month’s election will enter the Senate with virtually no credibility and a badly tarnished reputation.
Consider the latest sleazy smear tactics to make headlines in this race:
A Union City psychiatrist releases a secretly made tape of a 1999 conversation he had with a Lyndhurst attorney, one of then-Rep. Menendez’s longtime backers. (The psychiatrist had a lucrative contract with Hudson County at the time, but he later lost it, and is now suing the county, claiming he was a victim of extortion and racketeering.) During the expletive-laden taped conversation, the attorney urges the psychiatrist to hire someone as a favor to the congressman. The clear implication, which the Kean campaign wastes no time spreading far and wide, is that this all took place with the congressman’s knowledge and blessing, and that it amounts to a shakedown.
Jam-packed into this one-paragraph synopsis is a treasure trove of buzzwords. Union City. Lyndhurst. Hudson County. Extortion. Racketeering. Expletive. Shakedown. The Kean campaign couldn’t besmirch the Menendez reputation any better if it made him wear a giant "C" for "CORRUPTION" across his chest.
Not to be outdone, the Menendez camp uncovers a bit of dirty trickery by a Kean operative with a history of campaign chicanery. It seems that a researcher employed by a subcontractor to the Kean campaign has struck up a correspondence with former Hudson County Executive Robert Janiszewski, who is serving time in a federal prison in Kentucky on corruption charges. The disgraced executive, a Democrat, offers not only political advice to the Republican operative, but also a list of Hudson County politicians who might hold grudges against Sen. Menendez. One of the names on the list is the Union City psychiatrist.
Juicy stuff, eh?
Call us naive, but here’s what we’d like to know: What does any of this have to do with representing New Jersey in the U.S. Senate? What does it have to do with the candidates’ stand on issues that are important to the citizens of New Jersey and the nation? Does it have anything to do with the economy? The environment? Transportation issues? Education? U.S. foreign policy?
"Character" is always trotted out as the convenient excuse for candidates and their campaign operatives to wallow in this kind of mudslinging. But that’s nonsense. Sen. Menendez’s longtime friendship with a lawyer who suggested seven years ago that a government contractor might do something as a favor to his buddy in Congress may speak to his taste in friends, but does it really rise to the level of a character issue? Sen. Kean’s retention of a campaign subcontractor who digs up dirt from a felon with an axe to grind may say something about his hiring practices, but is this really a reflection of his character?
There’s only one reaction a thoughtful voter can have to all this a plague on both your houses which, of course, invariably translates into low voter turnout. The candidates don’t care; the lower the turnout, the fewer votes they need to win. It’s only when one of them gets to Washington, having earned little more than disdain from the folks back home, that the real consequences of this kind of campaign will begin to sink in.

