Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) arrives to view the FBI report on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh on Thursday on Capitol Hill.

New Jersey voters have sadly become all too familiar with politicians getting indicted on corruption charges. But that doesn’t mean they’ve entirely lost their sense of outrage over Sen. Bob Menendez, the incumbent Democrat who has been seeking re-election while pretending that a hung jury represents vindication. Now his campaign has a problem beyond his ethical challenges.

When a Monday Stockton University survey showed that Republican challenger Bob Hugin had pulled within the margin of error against Mr. Menendez, left-leaning pundits and media outlets claimed that the result was dubious because the poll allegedly included too few minority voters in its survey sample.

The critics may soon be apologizing to Stockton. That’s because there’s new reason to think this really could be a tight race, even in deep-blue New Jersey, which has not elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate since the 1970s.

No matter how many African-Americans are included in a polling sample, a report in New Jersey’s Star-Ledger newspaper suggests that Mr. Menendez may have a harder time winning over this key constituency than in his previous campaigns.

Mark Di Ionno reports:


Bishop Jethro James, leader of an 86-member black pastors’ association, is upset the Menendez camp seems to assume they have the black vote wrapped up.

“The Democrats have been taking the African-American vote for granted for too long,” he said in his office at Paradise Baptist Church in Newark. “It’s an insult. Some folks in the two-party system think this is like a political plantation: ‘You do what we say.’ We are long past that.”

The source of James’ ire was a call he received from T. Missy Balmir, a senior adviser for Menendez and veteran player in Democratic state politics. The call came after James hosted Hugin in his 400-member church a few weeks ago.

“They basically said, ‘Why did you invite him to your church? Why did you have a Republican in?’” James recalled.

The pastor didn’t appreciate this communication from Team Menendez, especially since the incumbent has not exactly been a fixture in Rev. James’ community. According to the Star-Ledger report:

“You know how many times I invited Bob Menendez to my church?” James said. “You know how many times he’s come? None. But at election time, they want our endorsement.”

... And, as it turned out, James seemed to like a lot of what Hugin -- the former chairman and CEO of Celgene Corp., a New Jersey biotech company specializing in drugs for cancer and chronic disease -- had to say.

“We (African-Americans) are 40 percent more likely to get cancer,” James said. “I’d say about 40 percent of the women in my congregation have had breast cancer. I myself had prostate cancer. Bob Hugin’s company made the drugs that saved my life.”

The issue of health care makes for a rather stark contrast between Messrs. Hugin and Menendez. While Mr. Hugin was working in biotechnology, Mr. Menendez was famously seeking to help Medicare fraudster Salomon Melgen capture more funding from federal health programs.

These days in the Senate, partisanship may seem to be at an all-time high. But this year there’s been at least one issue that has united members on both sides of the aisle. All three Republicans and all three Democrats on the Senate Ethics Committee signed an April letter to Mr. Menendez that reads in part:

1. From 2006 through 2013, you accepted numerous things of value from Dr. Melgen, including, but not limited to, travel on private and commercial flights, a luxury hotel stay in Paris, and lodging on 19 occasions at a Dominican Republic villa. You did not pay fair market value for, or, where required, obtain necessary written approval from the Committee to accept these gifts.

2. Over the course of several years, you failed to list gifts you had accepted from Dr. Melgen on your public Financial Disclosure Reports, as you were legally required to do.

3. During the same time period in which you accepted these gifts, you used your position as a Member of the Senate to advance Dr. Melgen’s personal and business interests...

Notably, you have not disputed the fact that you accepted numerous gifts from Dr. Melgen and took official actions related to his interests.

This last part is important. There’s no argument about what Mr. Menendez did. The only question—on which a 2017 jury failed to reach a verdict—was whether his actions were federal crimes. New Jersey voters now get to decide how much they’re willing to tolerate from public officials.


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Annals of American Economic Revival

Friday’s employment report from the Labor Department was better than the headline number. Donald Luskin of Trend Macrolytics notes:

This morning’s September Employment Situation report with 134,000 net payrolls looks like a big miss versus consensus expectations for 185,000. But it’s actually a big beat given very large upward revisions of 87,000 for the prior two months. This brings it into line with all the other contemporaneous indicators of job growth for September.

The “household survey” was strong, with employment higher by 420,000 and unemployment lower by 270,000. This implies that the labor force grew by 150,000 persons, more than all of whom were immediately employed.

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In Other News


Questions Everyone Is Asking

“Which is more criminal, death or taxes? Gov. Bruce Rauner, J.B. Pritzker fight it out,” Chicago Tribune, October 4

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Bottom Story of the Day

The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations

“Mom Sues to Get Son on JV Soccer Team, Fails,” FindLaw, Oct. 4


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Mr. Freeman is the co-author of “Borrowed Time,” now available from HarperBusiness.