Sen. Bob Menendez ends independent run days before he’s set to resign

Convicted Sen. Bob Menendez on Friday took his independent candidacy off the November ballot, ending for good the question of whether the disgraced senator would complicate an election for the party that spurned him.

It also formally ends a half-century in politics that began on a New Jersey school board and culminated with extraordinary power on the global stage. Hours earlier, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said he would appoint former chief of staff George Helmy to the Senate seat Menendez has said he will vacate in days.

“Please be advised that as an Independent candidate for the U.S. Senate in this November’s election I am advising you that I wish to have my name withdrawn from the ballot,” Menendez said in a letter filed with the state division of elections.

Menendez had said he would run for reelection as an “independent Democrat” if exonerated on corruption charges, and in June filed well over the number of petition signatures needed to get on the ballot as an independent.

But Menendez was not exonerated. Instead, a jury in July convicted him of 16 corruption counts. Even though Menendez plans to resign from the Senate on Tuesday, he hadn't addressed whether he planned to remain on the ballot until Friday — the deadline to withdraw his candidacy with the New Jersey Secretary of State.

Some New Jersey Republicans were hopeful that Menendez could play spoiler in the Senate race to replace him between three-term Democratic Rep. Andy Kim and Republican hotelier Curtis Bashaw. Murphy said that Helmy will fill Menendez's seat until a winner in that race is certified, then he will appoint that person.

Republicans have not won a U.S. Senate election in New Jersey since 1972. However, the political environment has changed drastically, with Vice President Kamala Harris now at the top of the ticket, and Menendez’s trial led to daily negative headlines about the senator taking bribes to help foreign governments and influence prosecutions.

Menendez has served in the Senate since 2006 and rose to national prominence as the chair of the Committee on Foreign Relations. He had been a member of the U.S. House, state Senate and Assembly, and mayor of Union City over a 50-year career that began with Union City’s school board.

Menendez’s son, Rob, a first-term House member who owes his political rise to his father’s influence in New Jersey Democratic politics, in June won a primary against Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla and is on a glide path to reelection in his overwhelmingly Democratic district.

Though Bob Menendez was for many years a feared Democratic power broker, state Democrats abandoned him within hours of his September 2023 indictment. It was a stunning contrast to his previous corruption indictment in 2015, when almost every member of the Democratic establishment stuck with him. That indictment led to a 2017 mistrial.