Blumenthal and Murphy took money from Menendez PAC.
Senators Richard Blumenthal and Christopher Murphy each accepted generous contributions from the PAC of their indicted colleague, Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat. Blumenthal received $10,000, presumably by check, from New Millennium PAC for his 2022 re-election campaign, according to Opensecrets.com.
Murphy received $7,500 from his fellow Democrat’s PAC for his 2018 campaign for a second term.
Blumenthal, who has nurtured a reputation for rectitude, accepted the Menendez maximum contribution after Menendez escaped conviction for corruption when a federal jury deadlocked in 2017. The Senate Ethics Committee admonished Menendez in 2018 because he “knowingly and repeatedly accepted gifts of significant value from” a doctor he used his position to assist.
Menendez was represented before the committee by Marc Elias.
Neither Blumenthal nor Murphy have called on Menendez to resign after he and his wife were indicted for accepting bribes that included “cash, gold bars, payments toward a home mortgage, compensation for a low-or-no-show job, a luxury vehicle and other items of value.”
In 2012, the Menendez PAC contributed $7,500 to Dan Roberti’s losing primary campaign in Connecticut’s Fifth Congressional District. Roberti was defeated by Elizabeth Esty. She went on to serve three terms in the House but ignoring a chilling case of harassment in her office caused her to abandon her bid for a fourth term in 2018.
The Menendez PAC also contributed $5,000 to Rep. John Larson in 2012, though he faced no serious opposition.
Blumenthal could have afforded to be more discriminating in soliciting and accepting contributions. Tribal loyalties cannot have blinded him to what Menendez is. But the instinct to grab every buck he can in an easy re-election campaign caused Blumenthal to abandon the standards he’s spent 40 years trying to convince the public he would always honor. For $10,000? Because he was worried Themis Klarides or Leora Levy might come within 10 points of him?
Blumenthal, Murphy and Larson might do the decent thing and engage in some contribution washing by divesting their never ending campaign committees of the amounts they received from Menendez but it won’t change the rules of the game to take whatever they can from whomever offers it.
Published September 25, 2023.