Wed Jun 03, 2009 at 01:22:34 PM EDT
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In the June issue of PoliticMagazine.com, they have an interview in the Movers and Shakers column with Senator Bob Menendez. In the interview, they ask the Senator to handicap the 2010 races touching on the PA US Senate race where the Senator says: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. In fact, Congressman Sestak has declared his intentions to run and now it remains to be seen whether the party will try to prevent people from supporting his effort. He talked about lessons learned and about trying to take more of a long range approach rather than focusing on the short two year 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. They also turned to Menendez's Cuba position and where it conflicts with the intentions of the Obama Administration: 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. On the Cuba front, the latest flare up that has the Senator threatening to withold funds centers around whether Cuba should be allowed to join the Organization of American States (OAS).
Overall, the Senator really seems to try and manage expectations for 2010 talking about where they stand and what they plan to do. The article is a good read. |
| Jason Springer :: Movers and Shakers talks with Menendez |
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