The Parties Should Be Strong Enough to Get Rid of Their Menendezes 

T he allegations that amount to almost cartoonish levels of corruption with which Senator Bob Menendez is charged prompted a deluge of calls for his resignation from his fellow Democrats. New Jersey governor Phil Murphy, several prominent members of the state’s Democratic congressional delegation, and a variety of left-wing activists and media figures want Menendez to call it a career. But so far, most of the senator’s colleagues in the upper chamber have held their fire. 

Only Senator John Fetterman has publicly called for Menendez to step down, which is more likely a reflection of his contempt for the Senate’s clubby codes of conduct than an expression of his moral compass. And yet, some statements from the majority party’s members do seem excessively deferential to the accused. “Bob Menendez has been a dedicated public servant and is always fighting hard for the people of New Jersey,” read Senator Chuck Schumer’s terse statement on the accusations against his colleague. “He has a right to due process and a fair trial.” The implication that the Senate majority should feel no special urgency to be rid of Menendez is receiving some support from the right. 

“Due process is important,” said Republican representative George Santos, who has himself been charged with fraud, money laundering, and making false statements to investigators. “He has a right to defend himself. He’s innocent until proven guilty. The media has to stop acting like everyone is guilty before they are judged by a jury.” The Washington Examiner’s Byron York agreed with Santos’s unstated theory, which assigns sovereignty over the fate of individual political careers to voters, judges, and juries alone. “I said at the time that [former Sen. Al] Franken should not have been rushed out of Senate. Too fast; no process,” he noted. “I’ve also said Santos should not be rushed out. Nobody has to listen, of course, but I think it’s better to let elections or actual judicial verdicts take care of things.”

The outcomes meted out by courts and in elections are certainly cleaner. They have the virtue of absolving the parties of any responsibility for their respective makeups, liberating those institutions from the unrewarding act of maintaining basic political hygiene. But the parties are not hostages to their voters. Nor is their intervention into political affairs a commentary on the guilt or innocence of the criminally accused. The two major political parties have one job: secure political power though victories at the ballot box. They are not only empowered but obliged to jettison their members who threaten the prime directive. 

Democrats who have called for Menendez’s abdication are, of course, engaged in a relatively low-stakes exercise. If New Jersey was governed by a Republican who would fill a vacant Senate seat with a political ally, Democrats would surely rationalize Menendez’s continued occupancy of the seat. On this, we don’t have to engage in much speculation. The outpouring of Democratic hostility toward Menendez today stands in marked contrast with the last time he faced a criminal prosecution relating to allegations of corruption — a time when Chris Christie occupied the governor’s mansion in the Garden State. Indeed, had Democrats consented to the prospect that a caretaker Republican might briefly occupy one of New Jersey’s Senate seats, they might not find themselves in their present bind. 

Pruning the unsound excesses that accumulate on the party’s fringes can be a painful exercise, even if it is a necessary one. When Democrats such as Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Kirsten Gillibrand, among others, called for Governor Andrew Cuomo’s resignation amid allegations of sexual harassment, it wasn’t without risks. They were complicit in the cultivation of a mid-pandemic cult of personality around New York’s governor to which many rank-and-file Democrats still subscribed by the summer of 2021. But his ouster over sexual-misconduct allegations was better than the alternative: his potential impeachment over the falsification of the data surrounding Covid-related nursing-home deaths. 

Moreover, the sour mood among New York’s voters toward their elected officials ensured that the party couldn’t afford “distractions” like Cuomo, as former state party vice chair Grace Meng noted. “We have midterm elections coming up,” she observed, “and we need to make sure that we are focused on maintaining the House and the Senate.” Those midterms were tough on New York’s Democrats, but Cuomo’s successor in the governor’s mansion survived a historically strong challenge from former representative Lee Zeldin. That election’s outcome might have been different if the Democratic Party hadn’t resolved to rid itself of its detritus. 

That is the lesson Democrats might have learned from their unwillingness to give former Virginia governor Ralph Northam the bum’s rush. Following the discovery of pictures of the governor in blackface alongside a college classmate dressed in a white robe and hood, Democrats were confronted with the standard of misconduct they had retroactively applied to others found in similar violation. And onetime Democratic lawmakers, as well as some legislative officials, did call on Northam to resign. But the governor held on with the implicit support of quieter Democrats like Virginia senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner. 

Democratic enthusiasm for Northam’s retirement evaporated when his likely successor, Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, was himself accused of sexual misconduct. Northam’s persistence compelled even the Democrats who called for his resignation to defend his conduct — or, at least, dismiss its relevance. But Glenn Youngkin incorporated the scandal into his litany of complaints with Virginia Democrats record. Political obituaries of Northam’s career note the extent to which he was “forged by scandal,” which is suggestive of his contribution to Youngkin’s two-point gubernatorial victory in 2021. 

If Democrats learned any lessons in all this, it is that it is better to have a party strong enough to rip its Band-Aids off than to allow its festering wounds to necrotize. If their partisans prefer necrosis, that’s their business — but the party is under no obligation to abide by their flawed verdict. Republicans could learn a few lessons of their own from the Democrats’ process of trial and error. One of those lessons is surely that it is better to win than lose races for high office so the party can painlessly discard its dead weight and present its best face to voters. But that would compel the GOP to reinvest in the notion that it is the master of its own destiny, and its commitment to its voters is not a suicide pact.