U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez brought his re-election campaign to Princeton with a rally in Tiger Park on Sept. 21 where the Democrat contrasted his record and stances on behalf of women and the LGBTQ community with those of his Republican opponent.
Joined by supporters and advocates for women and the LGBTQ community, he said Bob Hugin had a “lifelong record of working to keep women down (and) to shut the LGBTQ Americans out, which unfortunately began here at Princeton.”
“Time and time again, Bob Hugin stood on the wrong side of history, all the way back to his college years leading Princeton’s Tiger (Inn) eating club,” Menendez said. “In this role, Bob Hugin could have led by example. He could have been a voice for progress and inclusion. Instead, Bob Hugin stood in the way of the LGBTQ progress and worked to preserve Princeton’s Tiger Inn as a haven for straight, wealthy white male privilege, even making threatening comments about how a gay member wouldn’t last long in his club.”
He said Hugin, a 1976 Princeton alumnus, current university trustee and past Tiger Inn alumni president, had mounted a legal fight to keep women out of the club.
“Bob Menendez is trying to paint me as something I’m not,” Hugin said in a statement released by his campaign. “I’m proud that my views have evolved over the four decades and I view that as a positive. It’s unfortunate that someone who has spent 25 years in Washington has nothing positive to campaign on and instead has to resort to political attacks like these. As senator, I will put people above party and politics to get results for the people of New Jersey. Another six years of failure is not an option.”
Menendez has been in the Senate since 2006 and previously was in the House. But despite New Jersey being a Democratic state, a Quinnipiac University poll in August showed the race tightening. Where Menendez once enjoyed a 17-point-lead, his edge was down to six, 43-37, the poll showed.
Princeton Council candidate Eve Niedergang, a Democrat, joined with others to stand with Menendez at the rally. She said afterward that she backs him “because he supports a lot of things that I believe in deeply,” including the environment and LGBTQ and women’s rights. Menendez has a 100 percent rating by Planned Parenthood, according to that organization.
“I think on the things that I care about, he’s there and that’s the most important thing,” she said.
Niedergang, who attended graduate school at Princeton in the 1980s, wrote a letter published last week in the student paper, the Daily Princetonian, in which she said Hugin “should be asked to resign as a trustee.”
Yet Menendez, less than a year removed from his federal corruption trial ending in a mistrial due to a hung jury, did not have to look far for reminders of his past legal battle.
Protestors, including Princeton Republican Council candidate Lisa Wu, held up anti-Menendez signs. Wu held two of them, including one that had a photo of the senator with the word “corrupt” on top of it.
“People have a right to demonstrate,” Princeton GOP chairman Dudley Sipprelle said afterward. “It’s a free country.”
Speaking to reporters after the rally, Menendez said former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be coming to the state for a Women for Menendez event in October.