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Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla’s announcement to run for Congress against incumbent U.S. Rep. Rob Menendez, Jr. (D-8) against the implosion of Senator Bob Menendez’s (D-NJ) implosion on corruption charges reveals a less than usually totally bubble-wrapped Hudson County in a presidential election year.
Following his father’s crackup, the Hudson County Democratic Organization and attendant allies summoned the resolve to give Menendez, Jr. the thumbs up on his reelection.
Insiders had questioned whether or not the kid could survive his dad’s tormented slide into an international gold bar scandal.
He did, at least insofar as securing coveted establishment backing.
But Bhalla, a recognizable local commodity with fundraising heft, doesn’t buy it, and intends to prove the flimsiness of the incumbent and the party line with his upstart bid to displace the fledgling Menendez dynasty.
As an outsider, he has the added benefit in a Democratic Primary of the likely establishment candidacy of First Lady Tammy Murphy running with Menendez, and unwittingly contributing to the “all-politics-is-nepotism” storyline.
Then there’s Joe Biden over there at the top of that ticket, doing his level best to offer more establishment inertia and bore snore energy.
If that doesn’t have Bhalla pawing at the turf already, there’s U.S. Rep. Andy Kim (D-3), noble leader of the supposedly noble progressive rebellion, running against Tammy Murphy, and presumably available to link up with Bhalla in a show of grassroots resistance.
Will it matter?
Well, probably not.
The Menendez people are very probably looking at Bhalla as an opportunity, or explaining it to Junior as such, his own personal variation on Donald Payne, Jr.’s beat down of a progressive challenger in neighboring Essex a couple years ago.
Insiders muttered at the time that that young man didn’t have the chops to take on a legitimate headache from the left, but he did, running an overkill campaign, in fact, which left no doubt about his willingness to get scrappy when it counts.
Now, it’s Menendez’s turn, or Menedez Junior, anyway, to prove he can actually don the Joaquin Phoenix bicorn hat and ride out there and wave the sword around while his operatives summarily detonate Bhalla and the line holds, enough to be able to hoist the whole gang onto a few winners’ lists at year’s end.
All without really breaking a sweat, and with the old man in all kinds of hot water.
Might even make Junior a political star, some Menendez Junior handlers are no doubt whispering in his ear.
Bhalla, of course, has other plans, which makes the showdown interesting, particularly with the aforementioned dynamics, and the possibility that in a presidential election year, some Hudson voters might think Junior is Senior, and – conceivably – lash out with anybody but Menendez votes.
This could all be as simple as Where Does Brian Stack Stand?
The apoplectically organization-minded mayor (and state senator) from Union City could mobilize big (as he did for Albio Sires’ West New York mayoral campaign) and simply smother Bhalla. Or is Stack of the playful mind to watch Menendez work a little?
Then there’s Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, already an announced candidate for governor.
Will he got involved, and if so, how?
Does he trust the Hudson organization will hold up for him until 2025, or, if he doesn’t, does he join the Kim-Bhalla insurrection sooner rather than later? Or does he just say, “Screw it,” and jump in the congressional contest himself and, on the strength of his JC street cred, run over Menendez and the line?
All interesting questions, as Hudson next year – mostly thanks to a gutsy Bhalla – presents more than the usual wasteland of dead and dying politicians, brittle untested party lines, the hopes and dreams of nepotism, and the graveyards of unsung operatives wrapped in the umbilical cord slumbers of Frank Hague.
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