- Let's be honest, we don't know anything
about our elected officials.
They're hidden behind curated social media profiles
and press releases, to the point
that they often seem barely human.
We're here to break down those barriers
and get under the hood of their real character.
Our guest today is United States Senator Bob Menendez.
My name is Scott Salmon and this is Politically Driven.
(mellow music)
I have to say this is one of if not the most
surreal experiences of my life,
picking up a sitting United States Senator
at an IHOP just so we can drive around town
and just chat for a while.
I gotta address the elephant in the room
by asking you what you thought
of IHOP changing its name temporarily
to the International House of Burgers.
- It was terrifying.
(Scott laughs)
As someone who is an IHOP fanatic,
even though I don't eat the pancakes
when I go to IHOP. - Really?
Well, I'd turn into one.
If people say, I met the Senator for breakfast,
my friends, my closest friends,
will say, "Where'd ya meet him?"
(Scott laughs)
And either they'll say this certain diner
or they'll say IHOP and then they believe
that they met me.
- That's how ya know.
- Or they'll say that's not likely.
- That's like the secret code.
Do you have a standard order or something you always get?
- Yeah, I like eggs over medium
with the corn beef hash (laughs)
- Mmm, okay.
Interesting.
- If I'm in a diner, then I want Taylor Ham.
- Ohhhhh, and that answers my next question,
which was gonna be Taylor Ham or Pork Roll.
- Taylor Ham.
- Okay, fair enough.
- Well, it depends what part of the state I'm in.
- That's true, that's true, that's true.
That's true, yeah, I can imagine
you get "rolled" pretty hard if you go
into South Jersey and you call it.
- No pun intended.
- Yeah, no, exactly.
- I grew up in this tenement building right
by the elementary school I went to school with
and building's had some work on it
from when I was growin' up there.
A lotta hard workin' people but who were
at the lower end of the economic scale.
But great people with great families.
The fire escape was often the place
to catch the breeze
and the corner bodega was when you got to have a treat,
a little piece of candy, and if your mom
gave you somethin' for that.
Things were not easy at the time.
My mom was really my hero
'cause she was the driving force
to leave Cuba where my then brother and sister,
I was born here, but my family,
the rest of my family's all from Cuba.
She was the driving force, my father didn't wanna leave,
and she said, no, I don't wanna stay here
and have my kids grow up.
I think about courage 'cause no job.
- Right, right.
- Not understanding the language
in any way. - Did she speak it at all?
No, nobody waiting here for them
and so a lotta courage to uplift yourself,
uproot yourself, and start all over.
This is the building I lived on
over here. - Oh this is it?
This one over here, 4607.
- Oh you were right next to the school then.
- Yeah, right next to the school.
- Oh wow, okay.
And that's the fire escape.
- Yeah, those are the fire escapes.
This is the bodega.
So my mother taught me a lot,
part of it was that courage to start all over again
and search for freedom and a better life.
Then she was a seamstress in the factories here
in Hudson County and she was so good
at what she did, she worked long, hot hours
as a seamstress, she was so good
that the owners of the place said, oh no,
get off the machine and help others
and like help manage
the floor. - As like a manager, yeah.
Except that there were two guy managers
on the floor and they got paid as managers,
she just got paid as a seamstress, she never got
paid as a manager. - Oh interesting.
And so it taught me a lot about equal pay
for equal work at that time.
Then she would come home after a long day
of workin' in the factories in Hudson County
and she would ultimately cook and clean
and then after all of that she'd say
to me, Bobby, sit here and read in Spanish,
she'd say read your homework to me.
And I'd say, read my homework to you?
I'd say you don't understand English, Mom.
In Spanish I would say, Mama, you don't understand English,
you're not gonna understand what I'm sayin'.
She goes, "That's what you think,
sit here and read your homework."
- Mothers always understand.
- Taught me about the value of education, right?
After a long, hard day she was willing
to sit there and listen
to something she didn't understand just
to impress upon me the importance of our schoolwork.
Then she would invite people from the building,
especially on the weekend,
to have dinner with us and I would say to her.
- Just random people?
- From the building, yeah, other families she knew.
Say, why are you inviting people over,
there's not really enough to go around?
She'd say to me, well son, we have more
than they do and for so long as we do
we're gonna invite them,
and it taught me about a sense
of community and giving to others.
So my mom, growing up in that building
on Hudson Avenue, my mom taught me so many things
that I care about, that I fight for today,
equal pay for equal work, the importance
of education, the value of a sense of community.
What got me involved in public life,
I was a senior in high school, as a matter of fact,
I think if we go up the next block
we can pass by the high school.
Yeah, if we go up here.
I was told that because of my grades
and my activities I could be in the Senior Honors Program
but I'd have to cough up $200 for the books.
- $200, I imagine back then that was.
- That was a lotta money.
- I mean it's not nothin' now
but it's hard to imagine back then.
- And, as I said, my parents were poor,
we didn't have $200 for the books
and I couldn't understand for the life of me
if I had the ability and the grades
but not the money I'd be barred
from being in the honors program
so I created such a ruckus that they gave me the books,
told me to shut up, and put me in the honors program.
(Scott laughs)
But I didn't feel right about it
'cause I had friends who had the ability
and the grades and, like me, didn't have the money
but unlike me didn't say anything that didn't get in,
and so that lead me to ultimately go
and start a petition drive to change the school board
from an appointed board, whose policies I felt
couldn't give me the education I deserved
or my colleagues deserved.
That petition drive I conducted at the age of 19.
Long, hot summer, got thousands of signatures
with a group of my friends, put the petition
on the ballot, ran, got the referendum passed,
at 19 I ran for the first school board elections
in my hometown.
It was after that, there was an article,
to answer your question, this is the high school
that I went to.
- Oh wow.
- It's no longer a high school, now it's a middle school.
Union Hill.
But it was after that, when I became
the youngest elected school board member
at the time in the state's history,
that the local paper came and said,
what was it like running for the school board,
what do you ultimately wanna be?
And I said, I wanna be a United States Senator.
- Why a Senator?
'Cause there's obviously so many other positions.
You coulda said president, you coulda said governor.
I'm curious what it was about senator
that stuck out to you.
- Some of the great stories of people
in the Senate who made a real difference
and some of the stories in John Kennedy's
Profiles in Courage book about how people...
- That's true, yeah that would've been...
- Who chose a moment in time, on something,
that they maybe risked everything
but they changed the course of events
and that's what drives me.
That's what's driven me for the 44 years
is being able to change the course of events.
I remember still some of the passages,
I think it was the preface, of the book
"In whatever arena of life one meets the challenge
"of courage, no matter the sacrifice you face,
"if you follow your conscience, the loss
"of your friends or fortune, you will content
"that even the esteem of your fellow man.
"Each man must decide for himself
"the course he will follow.
"And in those stories..." and that was sort
of like the preface of the book,
it always stuck with me, and then the stories
were pretty powerful.
- What was your parents' reaction
to you getting into politics?
- Ya know, my mother wasn't all that hepped up about it.
She was proud but by the same token,
when you leave a country
because the government doesn't work.
- Ha ha, right.
- You have your own views about what government is like.
So she was apprehensive, I guess, probably.
Proud in one respect, apprehensive in another,
didn't really know if this is what I should be doing.
No one would believe this now but I was terrified,
terrified, to get in front of a group
of people and speak.
- Really?
- I was a good student, I was an honor student,
but I was told in my senior year
that you had to take speech, not speech
like speech therapy but speech to give.
- Like public speaking.
- Public speaking, extemporaneous speaking,
and poetry reciting, all that type of stuff
and I said oh no no no.
(Scott laughs)
I'm not taking a speech class
and my counselor at school said, no no no,
you have to take the speech class.
Said no, no I'm not taking the speech class.
Anyway, we went back and forth,
bottom line is I got the speech class,
the final word in the deal.
I would prepare for the speech class
whatever you had to write, whatever you had to to,
but I wouldn't get up and do the recitation.
- Right.
- I'll never forget the teacher, Gail Harper,
she kept me one day after class
and she said to me, ya know, I see
that you prepare your work but in this class
it's not just that you prepare the written assignments,
you have to do the oral presentations
and I can't get you to get up.
I said, well yeah, I'm sorry, I just can't do it.
She said, well, I'm gonna tell you something,
it's either that you do it or you're gonna fail.
(Scott chuckles)
Of course, failure, to going home
to my mother who I talked to ya about,
was not an option.
- Right (laughs)
- And to her credit, she would stay after school,
for several weeks, just building up a sense
of confidence for me, so I would get up
in front of her, everybody had gone,
the day was over, I would get in front of her
and I would read and I would do and whatnot
and then she would say, well, you should use this syntax
and this and that and all that type of stuff.
Anyhow, I finally broke in the classroom
and did it and all my fellow students were like,
oh my God, he finally speaks.
(Scott laughs)
- It was 1972, you were 19-years-old,
I've heard that the person that you ran against
he was a member of the church, he was beloved by all.
First of all, do you remember what his name is?
- Yeah, Reverend Miskins was his name.
- Oh, he was an actual reverend?
- Yeah.
- Okay, I thought it was like a parishioner
or something like that.
- No no no no no no, it was Reverend Miskins
and I wanted to file, once we won the referendum
and the school board elections were being established,
there were staggered terms three, two, and one.
I said if I'm gonna run for this
I might as well run for the longest term.
- Right (laughs)
- He filed for the longest term, too,
so it was like oh my God.
- I have to go up against someone, oh man.
- A little difficult.
- Yeah, really.
- Anyhow, but I won that election
and it was interesting because once the filing was over,
you don't know until the filing who's filing,
so once the filing was over I said, "Oh my God,
I can't run against a priest."
(Scott laughs)
But it worked out.
It worked out.
This is one of the places that I had one
of the best jobs I ever had
which is the tennis courts over there.
When I graduated from high school,
before I started college, I was teaching tennis
on the public courts.
(Scott laughs)
I was the thinnest I've ever been.
(Scott laughs)
I had the best tan I ever had.
Then the ladies from this high-rise used
to come down with their coolers
and take the tennis lessons and they'd have lemonade
or iced tea, it was a great summer.
- That was the best summer.
- Yeah, it was a great summer.
- That's funny.
- It was great job but anyhow.
- We took a city on the verge of bankruptcy,
we turned it around economically,
we built this daycare which is an award winning daycare
that went from taking care of young children
and then having grandmothers who were retired
but had a lifetime of knowledge
and experience and turned them
into certified daycare workers,
one of the first in the nation,
and then took mothers who might have been
on welfare and did job training
so it was an intergenerational program,
it was award winning one, so that was one
of our big successes.
Redoing the Little League field here
that had been closed for years
and looked like (stammers) horrible,
couldn't even call it a sandlot,
it was just lots of strewn, rebuilt that
so there was recreation.
Started rebuilding our schools.
Created one of the first fiber opticly network schools
at that time before the Internet was
what it was today in terms of wifi and whatnot
that President Clinton and Vice-President Gore came
to visit which was a big thing.
So we did a lot.
I think that the problem with Union City is
that it's landlocked,
so the rateable base mix, it's hard,
and so I would've liked to have ...
- You wanna conquer one of the surrounding towns?
(laughing)
Invade 'em, take 'em over, get access to the water?
- That's dangerous around here.
- Be able to deploy navies?
- Around here that's dangerous to even suggest.
I remember one of the great accomplishments I had
in the legislature, and it also told me
that sometimes even good ideas take time
to make happen.
- Oh that's a good one, yeah.
- We had a terrible set of cases here
with the Indian community where Indian-Americans
were being beaten up by a group,
they called themselves the "Dot Busters."
- Oh, Jesus.
- And they were goin' after
Indian- Americans - Oh God.
who wore a Bindi on their forehead
for no reason other than they were biased against them.
The community came to see me,
I was a state assemblyman at the time,
and they said, look, we believed in you
but we're being hurt and we're not getting help
and so of course I call the prosecutor's office
and whatnot but I started researching the law
and I saw that in New Jersey if you commit a bias crime
against (stammers) you painted a swastika
in a synagogue or burned a cross
or something like that, that when you defaced properties
based on a bias, there was a crime for it, a penalty for it,
but that if you committed a crime against someone out
of bias there was no enhanced penalty for it
so I created and was the author
of the state's first bias crime law
which said that if you commit a crime
against someone because of their race,
religion, ethnic origin, or sexual orientation,
which at that time.
- That must've been, yeah.
- Was very progressive at the time.
You would face, if convicted, a higher penalty.
Basically saying, we can't erase hatred out
of anybody's heart but we can send a societal message
that it's not acceptable.
- Right.
- But that took me, what I thought
was a pretty good idea and I thought
would have broad support, took me three years.
- Really?
- To finally get it. - Wow.
Jim Florio signed it, he was the governor then,
signed it into law and it was the state's first
biased crime law and one of the first in the nation
so it also taught me that sometimes even good ideas
and well-intentioned legislation,
they're gonna take time.
Ted Kennedy was exactly that, even though
he was the lion of the Senate
and he came from a storied family,
but he was the nicest average guy.
When I first got appointed I said, ya know,
call people by their title at that time,
didn't know them as well, Senator,
I'd like to sit with you, learn how I achieve success
here in the Senate, I know the House
but this is a different institution.
Bob, come on up, come to my hideaway.
A hideaway's a little place in the Capitol
where everybody's got a small office so
that if there are votes going on
they can still do work outta there.
Said come up to my office.
His was like a museum.
He had the rudder of his brother, President Kennedy's.
- The ship?
- Sailboat.
And all these pictures and all this stuff
and then come on, let's have a drink.
(laughing)
It was like have a drink?
It's a little early for that.
(laughing)
But, of course, I said yes, - Yeah, of course.
sure, absolutely.
- When Ted Kennedy asks you to drink, you drink.
- And he's pouring.
(laughing)
I'm not gonna say no.
Anyhow, but he was just so magnanimous
and so natural and so like, okay, it's Ted, it's not
Ted Kennedy the senator, it was Ted.
- Do you remember what your first coherent thought was
after it was made official?
- I think it's wow.
(Scott laughs)
It really happened.
It was (stammers) sort of like a lifetime dream
and that it was realized at that moment
after already a fair number of years
of public service was like a moment
of saying, ya know what?
In America, dreams can come true.
- [Scott] Yeah.
(mellow music)
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