Sen. Bob Menendez

Forget history, says Sen. Bob Menendez. The new DSCC chair is confident he can help his party avoid a midterm slide.

Bob Menendez is the junior senator from New Jersey and the first Hispanic to serve as chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Politics: Handicap your party’s prospects in the Senate heading into 2010.
Menendez: We’re cautiously optimistic. The reality is that historically, the president’s party loses seats in the midterm elections. So we’re in the business of defying that history and in many respects we’re in good shape to do so. We start off with all of our incumbents running for reelection, while the Republicans have a number of retirements. Our incumbents are overwhelmingly in good shape. There are a couple that we have to work with to strengthen their position and they know that. In the open seats, I love Robin Carnahan in Missouri. In New Hampshire, recent polls have Paul Hodes beating potential challengers. In Ohio, it’s a little bit of an embarrassment of riches—[Jennifer] Brunner and [Lee] Fisher have shown in the polls recently that they beat [Rob] Portman in a state where I wouldn’t want to be the former Bush trade representative and OMB director. But it’s only May, and one thing the last cycle showed us is that things can unfold as we go along. So, while we do have historical challenges, we also have a situation where Republicans start off at a deficit by virtue of giving up five seats and are demoralized by the Specter switch.

Politics: In that Pennsylvania race, is the DSCC fully confident in Arlen Specter as the Democratic candidate? What about Rep. Joe Sestak?
Menendez: As President Obama and Sen. Reid have said, we’re very confident that Arlen Specter can do very well in the Democratic universe and do exceptionally well in the general election universe. Rep. Sestak has an excellent background and he has every right to consider the race. I think he’s looking at it and making his own decisions. He’s got a great position in the House, and he is developing seniority there, and he’ll have to make those considerations at the end of the day.

Politics: On the fundraising front, the DSCC is just ahead of NRSC at the moment. The fact that so many Democratic candidates aren’t taking money from TARP recipients like Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, how much does that hurt?
Menendez: The committee is doing really well in the worst economic times since the Great Depression, and this is after a cycle in which there was donor fatigue and in which the Obama campaign did a tremendous job raising enormous amounts of money. I think it’s early in the process to be looking at the fundraising numbers, but just look at what our candidates are doing. They’ve raised a very signifi cant amount of money already—a whole host of them raised well over a million dollars in a quarter. To the extent that you limit your universe whenever you limit it, you obviously make for a tougher challenge for yourself, but I think people are meeting those challenges.

Politics: Are you worried about an enthusiasm gap in 2010 and are you confident that you can turn a lot of these new voters out without the president on the ticket?
Menendez: I think there’s going to be plenty of excitement and these candidates will generate that. Obama for America has morphed into the Democratic National Committee now, and they’re going to be doing stuff. They actually still have organizers on the ground in states and are still talking about substantive issues, which is good for Democrats generally. I think that the challenge of the times will keep people interested—the economy, healthcare and green energy. It won’t be a presidential election enthusiasm obviously, but I think we’re going to be able to turn people out.

Politics: As head of the DSCC, what are some of the steps you’re taking to expand the party’s outreach to Hispanic voters?
Menendez: That is something we’re going to continue to build on. We just recently had the first national Hispanic event for the DSCC here in D.C. And we brought a fair cross section of the Hispanic community in and raised a good chunk of money—all new money to the DSCC. When I look at this upcoming election cycle, whether it’s California or Nevada or Florida or New York, the Hispanic community will play significant roles in the statewide races in those states. And we have been increasingly reaching out to the community in a way the committee never has before. I have a natural ability to do that with the roles I have played over time so we’re working continuously on building upon the last election and proselytizing the Latino community to be more engaged with Democrats in general, but Senate candidates in particular.

Politics: In terms of strategy, whether it’s fundraising, grassroots or something else, any lessons learned from what the committee did last cycle, anything to improve upon?
Menendez: We had an incredible cycle, but of course we had a presidential election and of course it was before we hit the economic times that we have right now. Part of the challenge for the committee is that there’s always a new chair and it’s always a two year cycle. So there’s clearly the pressure and temptation to look in the short term. I’ve been talking about creating some longer term institutional opportunities so that when we reach out to young professionals—the ones who were engaged by Obama—they aren’t going to be the $30,400 giver, but they can be the $5,000 giver. And if you get enough $5,000 givers, you start adding up to some real money. More importantly, you get them engaged in the process, and then we turn them into givers to the party and also contributors back in state in terms of engagement with our candidates.

Politics: How big of an issue is Cuba and your opposition to the direction the administration is taking?
Menendez: I think it’s unique to Cuban Americans, and not broadly defined among all Hispanic voters. But in a state like Florida, where we have an election for the Senate, there are large concentrations of Cuban voters and this is one issue they care about. I applaud the president on the family reunification efforts as I have said. I disagree with some of the other provisions, particularly doing them unilaterally. For example, there’s no place in the world that you send money to your family and it costs you more than 3 or 5 percent to do so. If you send money to family in Cuba, the regime takes 30 percent. So it seems to me that instead of unlimited remittances, we could have done something that allowed remittances to take place if [Cuba is] willing to lower the usurious rate charged to Cuban Americans. That’s our disagreement—a little bit more of the how versus the what.