Patients For Affordable Drugs Action spent millions to boost Menendez in his 2018 campaign - but won't say if they will back him in 2024
Most Democrats have ditched Sen. Bob Menendez after he was indicted on bribery charges and accused by federal prosecutors of being a foreign agent, and it seems like the outside support he counted on to win his 2018 Senate race may be dwindling, too.
A super PAC focused on affordable drug prices that is funded by a Texas billionaire is not saying whether it would support the troubled New Jersey lawmaker if he runs for reelection next year.
Patients For Affordable Drugs Action spent $3.3 million against Menendez’s Republican opponent in 2018, biotech CEO Bob Hugin.
The group was the third-largest spender in the 2018 Senate race between Menendez and Hugin, according to OpenSecrets. The super PAC paid for TV ad buys, online advertising and other media production costs.
Patients For Affordable Drugs Action is funded primarily by hedge fund manager John Arnold and his wife, Laura. Arnold is a former Enron executive and the founder of the philanthropy-focused Arnold Ventures.
Arnold also funds Patients For Affordable Drugs Now, a dark-money group focused on lowering drug prices. Arnold Ventures gave $19.9 million to the group from 2019 to 2021, according to its website.
Menendez won the 2018 race by an eleven-point margin, a close race by New Jersey’s deep blue standards. Senate Majority PAC, the main outside group supporting Senate Democrats, spent over $7 million against Hugin — but with a competitive primary on the horizon and Menendez’s poll numbers in single digits, it’s likely that he will not have the backing he had in his last reelection bid.
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But it’s entirely unclear whether Menendez will receive support from either group this time around. Patients For Affordable Drugs Action declined to comment on whether they would back the embattled senator.
A spokesperson for Menendez did not respond to a request for comment.
Most of Menendez’s Senate colleagues have called on him to resign, including Democratic Senatorial Campaign chairman Gary Peters, a sign that Menendez may not be able to rely on the institutional support he had in 2018 after his first bout of legal woes. Menendez has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
After his first indictment in 2015 on bribery and fraud charges and a 2017 mistrial, most of the state’s Democratic establishment stood by the state’s senior senator. But now, the Democratic machine in the state has turned away from Menendez and is instead backing Tammy Murphy, Gov. Phil Murphy’s wife, who launched her Senate bid last week. She has been endorsed by Leroy Jones Jr., the state’s Democratic chairman. In a massive blow to Menendez’s campaign, the Hudson County Democratic Party — his home county — backed Murphy.
Polls have indicated that voters have had enough of Menendez, too. A poll conducted in October by Farleigh Dickinson University found that 70% would prefer that he resign. Another poll conducted by Democratic firm Public Policy Polling for VoteVets, an outside group supporting Rep. Andy Kim’s Senate campaign, found Menendez had an 8% approval rating.
And the icing on the cake for Menendez — a recent Eagleton/Rutgers University had a 6% favorability rating among New Jersey registered voters, while 69% viewed him unfavorably. Only 9% of Democratic voters still view him favorably, a warning sign for his primary contest against Murphy and Kim.
“Menendez’s ratings have never been exceptionally positive throughout his tenure as a U.S Senator in New Jersey, but they have now unsurprisingly hit rock bottom,” said Jessica Roman, a research associate at the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling. “He has likely scored the lowest favorability and approval ratings of any major New Jersey political figure we have ever polled in our five-decade history.”