Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

... Kean... intends to make a campaign film that accuses his Democratic opponent, Robert Menendez, of "being wrapped up in the rackets for 30 years" despite public records and statements by former federal prosecutors that contradict Mr. Kean's most serious charges.

Mr. Kean's chief campaign consultant, Matt Leonardo, a strategist for Republican candidates, disclosed the plans in an interview and said the film would be "very similar" in purpose to the commercials used to attack the military record of John Kerry during the 2004 presidential race.

Kean campaign officials have sought to erode their opponent's public biography, charging that virtually every moment of Mr. Menendez's career has been mired in graft and bossism. That includes his early days in Union City, where Mr. Menendez has said that he acted to thwart a racketeering scheme involving his own political associates and organized crime figures -- a claim that is documented in public records and corroborated by independent authorities.

Nevertheless, the Kean campaign will challenge that biography in "a long-form film," Mr. Leonardo said, just as commercials broadcast in 2004 attacked Mr. Kerry's military record. Those commercials, relying on claims by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, purported to expose Mr. Kerry's military decorations as exaggerated or fraudulent. Although the premise and many elements of the Swift boat advertisements were strongly disputed, as a whole they were seen as successful in hobbling the Kerry campaign.

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Mr. Kean's most serious charge is that Mr. Menendez was "part of a massive illegal kickback scheme" as a Union City official in 1978, and not the courageous truth teller depicted in his résumé. Mr. Kean charges that Mr. Menendez cooperated with prosecutors to keep himself out of jail.

Mr. Kean's charges are not, however, supported by the public record and were repudiated by independent authorities including the four assistant United States attorneys who prosecuted Union City officials of that era for racketeering and corruption. There is no truth, those former officials say, to the Kean campaign's charge that Mr. Menendez made a deal to keep himself out of prison.

The prosecutors said the actions of Mr. Menendez, as the secretary of the Union City Board of Education from 1978 to 1982, were "gutsy" and "courageous." They said he was never in legal jeopardy.

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...Mr. Leonardo... continued to assert that Mr. Menendez had not willingly helped the prosecution, but had done so under pressure. "He went to the grand jury 12 times," Mr. Leonardo said, by way of example.

None of those appearances were under pressure, said Mr. Friedman, who said that while he could not recall how many times Mr. Menendez testified before the grand jury, the number was not a measure of his cooperation. As school board secretary, Mr. Menendez served as the custodian of a dense set of records that were at the heart of the scheme. He would have returned as often as the grand jury had questions, Mr. Friedman said.

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The Menendez campaign said the film would damage Mr. Kean.

"A lie is a lie, no matter how many times Tom Kean Jr. repeats it," said Matt Miller, a spokesman for Mr. Menendez. "He already has been exposed as a fraud. He has destroyed his credibility, and he is on a fast track to ruining a respected family name."