New Jersey’s Star-Ledger on Monday endorsed Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez in his re-election campaign, though the newspaper notes that both he and his Republican opponent are “awful candidates,” and “slippery characters.”
Menendez, who was found by the Senate ethics committee to have violated the chamber’s rules by accepting expensive gifts and using his office to promote his associates’ interests, though he was not convicted of a crime.
However, the Star-Ledger notes that while it’s a “miracle” that Menendez avoided a criminal conviction and stayed in the race, Republican candidate Bob Hugin “is no better,” having used “the closing weeks of his campaign to spread the most vicious lie of this election season in New Jersey -- the suggestion that Menendez patronized child prostitutes in the Dominican Republic.”
The newspaper also notes that Hugin was the executive chair of biopharmaceutical company Celgene where he made “up to $200 million.” The company is “known for its vigorous fight to keep cheaper generics off the market so it could repeatedly hike the cost of its expensive cancer drugs,” and “paid $280 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit charging that the firm deliberately deceived doctors by concealing potentially fatal side effects of its cancer drugs.”
For the Star-Ledger, “when you get past ethics, the central issue in this race is [President] Donald Trump. The question is which candidate can best fight Trump's toxic policies, his grotesque appeals to racial and ethnic tribalism, and his corrosive attacks on the pillars of our democracy, starting with the rule of law.
The newspaper concludes, “That makes this an easy decision: Menendez is the better choice, by far. He has our endorsement.”
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