![]() The resort features three polo fields, 13 tennis courts, a spa, marina and three golf courses.īoth Melgen and his wife, Flor, began donating to Menendez’s campaigns, contributing more than $750,000 to the senator’s coffers during the course of their friendship. Salomon Melgen APĪt his sprawling, ranch-style villa, Melgen hosted Bill and Hillary Clinton, and their pal Terry McAuliffe, a former head of the Democratic National Committee, among other high-ranking Dems.īy the time he became a US senator in 2006, Menendez was also a frequent guest at Melgen’s home in the gated community, where beachfront villas cost as much as $20 million. Melgen also owned a lavish home in Casa de Campo, a posh seaside town in the Dominican Republic, where his neighbors included fashion designer Oscar de la Renta. Salomon Melgen, a prominent Florida ophthalmologist who grew up in the Dominican Republic, was well known as a deep-pocketed Democratic donor who often threw open his 6,500-square-foot North Palm Beach mansion for political fundraisers. It’s clearly influencing the vote.”īob Menendez met the man who would become his most important benefactor shortly after he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1993. “It just goes to show you the importance of Menendez’s corruption trial. “To the extent that this election has turned into a referendum on President Trump and in a state where Trump is not popular, you would think that an incumbent senator with a good legislative record would not have a problem getting elected,” said John Weingart, associate director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. ![]() Hugin, a political neophyte and millionaire, is giving Menendez, a veteran politician first elected to public office as a 20-year-old in 1974, the run of his life. Other polls last week showed Menendez opening wider leads, from 6 to 11 points.īut no matter what poll you choose, the fact that the Democratic incumbent in solidly blue New Jersey - where a Republican has not been elected to the US Senate since 1972 - even faces a serious challenge is nothing short of a miracle. This past week, a poll conducted by Stockton University found Menendez had 45 percent of the vote, compared with Hugin, a former pharmaceutical executive, who had 43 percent. A recent poll showed Menendez was viewed unfavorably by more than half of New Jersey’s eligible voters, and he led by only 2 percentage points against Republican foe Bob Hugin, 64. 6 election, the long shadow of Menendez’s trial looms over the incumbent’s re-election campaign. It’s one of a handful of negative TV spots paid for by a super PAC whose Web site, Shamelessl圜, reminds voters that New Jersey’s embattled two-term senator faced a historic federal corruption trial in 2017, where he had been accused of accepting bribes from his friend Salomon Melgen in return for political favors for him and a bevy of beauties, with many of the details first revealed by The Post. The political commercial goes on to detail Menendez’s cozy relationship with a millionaire benefactor, flashing images of a private jet, clinking champagne glasses and sultry models - all scenes from a lavish, globe-trotting lifestyle a world away from the modest houses covered with aluminum siding and neat driveways of Menendez’s old neighborhood. “I never forgot my roots,” says Menendez, 64, pointing a finger at the camera.īut the folksy part of the clip ends abruptly, interrupted with a blaring voice-over, dripping with sarcasm: “Is he kidding?” Bob Menendez, casually dressed in a button-down shirt, open at the collar, walks through working-class Union City, NJ, where he grew up in a family of Cuban immigrants. In a scene from a recent campaign ad, Democratic US Sen. 'The world is watching': Lawmakers press Biden for 'harsh' response to Putin ![]() Bob Menendez under investigation – againĪpparently, this House seat belongs to the Menendez family - not the voters
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