On Monday, New Jersey Mayor Christine Serrano Glassner, who has ties to former President Donald Trump’s political group, declared her candidature for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 2024.
This is Senator Menendez’s third federal inquiry since he was first elected to the Senate in 2006, and the mayor of Mendham Borough in Morris County, Serrano Glassner, is hoping to unseat him.
Senator Menendez has spent his entire life working in politics. Glassner says of him in a campaign video, “He’s under investigation again.” New Jersey needs a leader who can be trusted and who will do whatever it takes to solve the state’s problems. We need someone who will prioritise us. Someone who puts his friends and family ahead of his constituents in New Jersey.
Republicans haven’t won a U.S. Senate election in New Jersey since 1972, but some state Democrats are concerned that the latest federal investigation could threaten Menendez’s reelection. The investigation is looking into how an Edgewater-based company got an exclusive government contract in Egypt to certify Halal meat.
Menendez has declared his candidature for reelection, and he appears to have the support of the vast majority of Democrats in the state. That might change if he’s charged with something.
However, in New Jersey, where Trump backlash helped Menendez sail to an 11-point victory over Republican Bob Hugin in 2018, despite Menendez having just survived a corruption prosecution after the jury deadlocked, Serrano Glassner’s ties to Trump could also be a political liability.
Public relations firm C&M Transcontinental counts Serrano Glassner among its principals and co-founders. Michael Glassner, her husband, runs the company. From July 2015 until November 2020, Michael Glassner was Trump’s chief operating officer and deputy campaign manager. According to recent allegations, he is currently managing a legal defence fund for Trump.
In a statement, Menendez adviser Michael Soliman focused on Trump’s ties.
New Jersey voters “will soon learn” that “the mayor is a hardcore, unapologetic Trump supporter,” as Soliman put it. Mayor Serrano Glassner is a staunch supporter of Trump despite his insurrectionary push, his boasting about ending Roe v. Wade, and his cosy relationship with Vladimir Putin. Clearly, she has lost touch with the average New Jersey resident. Bob Menendez has an unparalleled track record of success and activism on behalf of New Jersey.
Serrano Glassner won the 2016 election for a seat on the Mendham Borough Council and the 2018 election for mayor. About 5,000 people live in Mendham Borough, which is surrounded on three sides by Mendham Township, where former governor and Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie was born and raised.
“As a fighter for New Jersey residents and businesses throughout my career in federal and state government, and based on my experience as a mom and a mayor, I am ready to go to work,” Serrano Glassner said in a statement. We need a leader who will stand up for New Jersey’s hardworking families and for all Americans. If elected, I will be that leader and I will put a stop to Bob Menendez’s cronyism-filled political career.
In her bid to unseat Menendez, Serrano Glassner becomes the first sitting Republican official to do so. The Federal Elections Commission has also received paperwork from immigration lawyer Shirley Maia-Cusick, libertarian gubernatorial candidate Gregg Mele, and educator Dan Cruz, a former member of the Andover Regional Board of Education.
So far, Kyle Jasey, a real estate lender from Jersey City and the son of retiring Assemblymember Mila Jasey (D-Essex), is Menendez’s only Democratic primary opponent.