The Washington Post has a very nice writeup today on Tom Kean, Jr., the Republican challenger for the Senate seat held by Bob Menendez in New Jersey. This is a battle that was not supposed to even be close yet Kean is staying very, very competitive. What appears to be making a difference to the conventional wisdom is the one-two punch of an investigation into Menendez's real estate dealings and a very, very good family political history that gives Kean the all-important name recognition.
In a typical year, the vicious, pile-driving style of New Jersey politics is a dispiriting spectacle for the voters of the state and a kind of Ultimate Fighting amusement for everyone else. But this year is different. This year, the Democratic Party needs six seats to take control of the Senate, and just about any way you run the numbers, the party will fall short if it does not win in New Jersey. Victory here does not assure the Democrats the keys to the upper chamber, but the pros will tell you that without New Jersey, the party doesn't have a real chance.
That fact has handed 38-year-old Thomas H. Kean Jr. — until now a semi-obscure state assemblyman and the scion of a multi-generational political dynasty — a breakout role in the midterm drama. Not since 1972 has a GOP candidate won a Senate seat in New Jersey (although the state has put several Republicans in the governor's chair during those years).
But Kean has this race squarely in the "too close to call" category, thanks to name recognition, vigorous campaigning and dogged repetition of that "investigation" mantra. An Oct. 12 poll by Quinnipiac University gave Menendez a slight but statistically almost insignificant edge, 49 percent to Kean's 45 percent.
"He has a really powerful name," Clay Richards, a Quinnipiac pollster, says of Kean. "And whether or not these charges against Menendez are serious, they are hurting him."
The whole investigation matter, which we'll get to, is hardly as cut and dried as Kean indicates. But Kean, who looks like a Mountie and fights like a Crip, isn't selling honesty and integrity so much as a brand name that represents honesty and integrity. It's a pitch with resonance in this state, where politicians routinely scamper offstage chased by ethics charges and mortifying headlines.
It is a surprisingly long article and is actually quite favorable to Kean. This is one of those races that Barron's says will be won by the guy with the fundraising advantage – that would be Menendez, of course. On the other hand, it really was not supposed to be a race at all, was it? The upset win is possible in this race. How probable, I am not sure. There is, as the article points out, a powerful Democratic party machine in New Jersey. So that may be the one thing Kean can't surmount – this time around, anyway.
If I bet on politics, I’d drop a good piece of change on Kean pulling the upset. All my relatives: mother, sister, aunts, uncles and cousins–and all their wives and husbands (and their voting age kids)–are lockstep NJ Dems that are the core of that vaunted New Jersey Democratic Party machine, and they are all fed up to their eyeballs with the way the party has been operating, with almost every “name” Democrat tarred in some way dating back to the Torricelli switcheroo.
Most of them couldn’t give a damn about Menendez, since most of them didn’t really know who he was before Corzine chose him to fill his Senate seat when he became Governor. He was just another party hack, and the investigation into his financial shenanigans reinforces their belief that the NJ Dems are a pack of liars and thieves. That, combined with the Kean family’s name–which carries no such baggage–has almost every last one of them telling me they are gonna vote for Junior sheerly out of anger at the state party’s leadership.