In boxing, you win or lose the rounds.  In statewide races for the United States Senate or Governor of New Jersey, you win the weeks.  And this past week has been thus far the best week of the campaign of incumbent New Jersey U.S. Senator Bob Menendez. 

To state it succinctly, during the past week, the earned media of Bob Menendez “trumped”, to use a pun, the paid media of his Republican challenger Bob Hugin.   

Menendez is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  In that capacity, he has had numerous press events and interviews regarding what I have labeled as the “Helsinki Firestorm”, the diplomatic and national security debacle of President Donald Trump’s summit meeting with Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin. 

Both cable and network television have intensely covered these Menendez press conferences and interviews.  This earned media has been a godsend to the Menendez campaign.  

On foreign policy and national security issues, Menendez is a superb communicator, and among political figures, his expertise in these areas is second to none.  Prior to the Helsinki Firestorm, the Menendez image in New Jersey, rightly or wrongly, has been that of a corrupt, unethical Hudson County politician, only interested in lining his pockets.  Thanks to the earned media resulting from the Helsinki Firestorm, Bob Menendez has a new emerging image with the New Jersey electorate, that of a patriotic statesman Senator who is a guardian of our national security, combatting the treasonous appeasement behavior of Donald Trump, the Neville Chamberlain of this era. 

Thus far, the SuperPacs and official campaigns of both candidates have focused on the vulnerabilities of their opponents.  If you watch the commercials on behalf of Hugin, you receive a message that Bob Menendez is a greedy, venal political hack who belongs in jail.  If you watch the commercials on behalf of Menendez, you are told that Bob Hugin has been a shamelessly greedy business executive of Celgene, a pharmaceutical company alleged to have gouged cancer patients with obscenely high prices yielding offensively huge profits for the company.  For the voter, it is a case of pick your poison. 

This week, Hugin launched another such commercial named “The Two Bobs.”  In the face of the tidal wave of positive earned media for Bob Menendez, this commercial will have all the impact of a tree falling in the forest.

Prior to this week, the foreign policy issue had been a major asset for Menendez among the state’s Jewish voters, due to his status as a stalwart supporter of the State of Israel.  In the wake of the Helsinki Firestorm, Menendez’s status as ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is a major positive “trump” card with the entire New Jersey electorate. 

All this also makes more acute the Trump dilemma of Bob Hugin.  New Jersey is a state of Trump toxicity, where the President is about as popular as an outbreak of measles.  Bob Hugin’s only prior political experience has been that of a major campaign figure for the 2016 Trump for President campaign.  The Trump albatross weighs heavy on Hugin. 

Yet Bob Hugin cannot hope to win without overwhelming support from Trump voters.  The President himself accurately described the fanatic loyalty of these voters during his campaign:  They would stick with him, even if he publicly shot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. 

The Hugin campaign is already hemorrhaging voters to the independent campaign of Murray Sabrin, also a Trump supporter.  If Hugin intensifies his current relatively soft criticism of Trump’s Russia actions, the movement of Trump base voters from Hugin to Sabrin will become an avalanche. 

Any attempt by Hugin to debate Bob Menendez on foreign policy issues will result in catastrophe for the Republican challenger’s campaign.  It would remind boxing historians of the middleweight championship fights between the badly overmatched Bobo Olson against the greatest fighter pound-for-pound of all time, Sugar Ray Robinson. 

All this also has given Bob Menendez a major positive-negative one-two punch, reminiscent of the late heavyweight champion, the Hard Rock from Brockton, Massachusetts, Rocky Marciano.  The positive punch is his unassailable status as one of America’s most influential foreign policy figures.    The negative knockout punch is his anti-Trump message.

Republican consultants hope the Trump Russia issue will fade away.  It won’t happen.  Indeed, for Bob Menendez, the Helsinki Firestorm is political manna from heaven. 

Alan J. Steinberg served as Regional Administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as Executive Director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission under former New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman.