Menendez Jr., the congressional candidate, navigates stepping into and out of dad’s shadow – NJ.com

When you’re the son of a U.S. senator, all it takes is one open political seat to launch your next career.

Robert “Rob” Menendez Jr.’s life so far has been expected, if not demanded: private high school, elite college, law school, and a career at a white shoe law firm.

At 36 years old, he’s married with a young daughter and living in the Lafayette neighborhood of Jersey City. Flash forward a few years and he could be a partner or even running his own firm.

But when Eighth District Rep. Albio Sires announced his retirement in December, Menendez Jr.’s career was set on a different path.

Taking a page out of the Hudson County Democratic Organization (HCDO) playbook, endorsements poured in — from Gov. Phil Murphy to Sen. Cory Booker to elected HCDO leaders. The message was loud and clear to any would-be challengers in the June primary: the Eighth District seat is Menendez Jr.’s to lose.

Menendez Jr., who has never been elected to public office — he flirted with a run against Steve Fulop last year — is stepping into the spotlight by running for the same congressional seat his father, Sen. Bob Menendez Sr., held from 1993 to 2006.

Menendez Jr. (he’s “Rob,” while dad is “Bob”) said the most important lesson imparted by his father is that politics “is about service, and you have to work hard every single day to improve the lives of your constituents.”

That ethos — of politics as a form of public service to the district he grew up in — informed his decision to run.

“In this moment, with everything that’s happening in our communities and our state and our country, I feel a need to be actively engaged,” Menendez Jr. said. “To be of service to my community.”

His father said he is in it for the right reasons.

“He’s a lawyer that’s making more money than he’ll make as a United States House of Representatives member … so it’s not about money. Not about fame, he’s on the board of the Port of Authority of New York and New Jersey, that can give you some wide recognition,” Menendez Sr. said. “He has a deep and abiding sense of service to others.”

In the heavily Democratic district, Menendez Jr. is running like an incumbent. In an interview he declined to take shots at his progressive left primary opponent David Ocampo Grajales and didn’t engage with many hot-button national issues.

Pressed to speak on the differences between the establishment Democrats he’s running with and the party’s more progressive wing, Menendez Jr. argued they have more in common than not.

Menendez Jr.’s interest in serving the district that serves most of Hudson County and parts of Essex, Union and Bergen counties, appears genuine, but at the moment he has offered few policy proposals.

Asked about themes of his campaign, he supplied some broad areas of concern, including affordable in housing, health care and education. He named early childhood care as his number one priority if elected to Congress.

“Investing earlier on produces better outcomes,” he said. “I think also investing in early childcare, childhood education, provides relief to parents who the last two years have been extremely difficult for.”

Menendez earned his undergrad degree at the University of North Carolina after graduating from the Hudson School, a private school in Hoboken, in 2003.

At Rutgers Law School — where dad also earned his law degree — Menendez Jr. received the Alumni Senior Prize, awarded to the student who “has the greatest promise as a future member of the legal profession. He was also president of the Student Bar Association.

Daniel Faltas, an editor along with Menendez Jr. at the law school’s Race and the Law Review from 2010-2011, recalled him as “engaging, gregarious, (and) popular.”

“(Menendez is) going to be a great politician,” Faltas said with a laugh. “He’s got that quality.”

Bernard Bell, a Rutgers Law professor who taught Menendez constitutional law and employed him as a research assistant, called him a “fabulous” student, “just a delightful person to interact with in class and as a research assistant.”

Fresh out of law school Menendez Jr. landed a job at Lowenstein Sandler, a top law firm in New Jersey, where he counsels clients on “structuring, formation, and operation of private investment funds, as well as on related regulatory and compliance issues.”

Looming large over his campaign is his father’s legacy. For most of his life, Rob Menendez appears to have embraced, rather than distanced himself from, that legacy.

He played an active role in each of his father’s statewide campaigns and took a semester off from college in 2006 to work on dad’s first U.S. Senate campaign. He even took center stage at one event when Menendez Sr. was unable to attend.

Menendez Jr. recalled his early life as different than most, but in a way that deepened his understanding of politics. His father was elected mayor of Union City in 1986, the same year Jr. was born.

“Not many kids are going to Schuetzen Park in North Bergen for political events when they were children,” he said. “It was an added lens into what it means to be an elected officeholder, to be a public servant.”

Father and son have called on each other in ways beyond campaigning. Faltas remembered a time when Menendez Jr. got his father to address their law review at a symposium. And during Menendez Sr.’s corruption trial in 2017, Menendez Jr. was the first witness in his defense.

With the primary election just a few months away, it remains to be seen if Menendez Jr. is going to let his last name do the campaigning for him. He said he’s working hard, meeting with community leaders to get the word out.

Menendez Sr. dismissed the idea that his son is running on his coattails. And although his son has no public office experience, he pointed out, neither do his opponents.

But Menendez Jr.’s campaign still faces an awkward question: How much can a candidate, however well-meaning, who just happened to be in the right place at the right time, with the right politically connected father to line up a congressional seat, claim to be serving the public?

Eighth District voters will likely find out soon how much Menendez Jr. delivers for them.

Or not. No one’s making anyone vote for him, Menendez Jr. cautioned. “I believe in the election system we have. I believe that voters will have a choice in June.”