Majority of New Jersey residents polled say indicted Sen. Menendez should resign

Everyone from Democrats to national news columnists to progressive activists have called on indicted Sen. Bob Menendez to resign, and now the New Jersey masses want him out, too.

Seventy percent of Garden State respondents to a new Fairleigh Dickinson University poll would like to show the state’s senior senator the door.

“Menendez has been able to weather charges in the past,” Dan Cassino, a professor of government and politics and director of the poll, said in a statement. “But this time, it just doesn’t seem like he has any real support left.”

While Republicans are more likely to root for his departure than Democrats or independents, Menendez — a Democrat who has held the seat since 2006 — lost support across political parties, the poll found.

Unaffiliated voters who were reminded of the corruption charges by pollsters said they’d more likely vote Republican in the Nov. 7 election, when all 120 state legislative seats are on the ballot, according to the poll.

“Thinking about Menendez makes less partisan voters more likely to say that they’re going to vote Republican,” said Cassino. “The question is whether those voters are going to bother to show up in what’s normally a very low turnout election.”

The poll surveyed 813 randomly selected New Jersey residents between Oct. 6 and Oct. 14.

Asked to comment, a Menendez spokesperson said, “The FDU poll is fundamentally flawed — reflecting the reality that the public has only seen a limited set of facts presented by the prosecution to be as salacious as possible. Once the truth is known and the real facts are presented, the polling will change once the senator is found innocent.”

The poll results were announced Thursday, a week after federal authorities accused Menendez of acting as a foreign agent for Egypt by speeding billions in military aid to the country that had previously been denied because of human rights abuses. Authorities last month also indicted Menendez for allegedly taking gold bars, cash, cars, and other bribes to help a North Jersey businessman and disrupt criminal investigations into his business associates. His wife Nadine, who was also indicted last month, has subsequently come under scrutiny for fatally hitting a pedestrian in Bergen County in 2018.

Menendez has denied any wrongdoing and refused to resign, even though he stepped down as chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He beat unrelated corruption charges in 2017 after jurors deadlocked and the judge declared a mistrial.

“So the bottom line is the government is engaged in primitive hunting — that’s where you continue to hound your prey until it is exhausted, and then you kill it. That’s not going to work with me … I’m innocent,” Menendez told reporters earlier this week.

Menendez is up for reelection in 2024. He has not said if he will seek a new term. Rep. Andy Kim (D-03) is seeking to defeat him in a primary next year.

The sagging support for Menendez comes amid widespread public cynicism, with most of those polled declaring that politicians in New Jersey, as a whole, are corrupt.

Almost 60% of poll respondents declared Garden State politicians “very” or “somewhat” corrupt, which isn’t significantly changed from May, when Fairleigh Dickinson pollsters last surveyed the public on the subject. Only 9% of people in this week’s poll felt politicians here are “not at all” corrupt. Republicans are likelier than Democrats to suspect corruption.

“It seems like a degree of corruption is already baked in to how New Jersey voters see their elected officials,” Cassino said.