Menendez - Bergen Record - Menendez uses Obama to mend fences with blacks

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Published in the Bergen Record, Saturday, June 3, 2006

Menendez uses Obama to mend political fences with N.J. blacks

Saturday, June 3, 2006

By PAUL H. JOHNSON
STAFF WRITER

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois joined Sen. Robert Menendez on the campaign trail in Essex County on Friday to build support in the black community.

Menendez and Obama first traveled to Tabernacle Baptist Church, on the border of Newark and Irvington, where both met with black ministers from around the state. From there, they attended a rally at East Orange High School, where they were joined by Rep. Donald Payne, D-Newark, Sen. Frank Lautenberg and several other Essex County politicians.

New Jersey's African-Americans traditionally have supported the Democratic Party, but Menendez is unknown to many African-American voters, other than those in Hudson County, where he carried on a bitter feud with Glenn Cunningham, who was Jersey City's first African-American mayor.

"I think the senator is going to have to work for [for the black vote], and he should work for it," said Walter Fields, a former political director for the New Jersey NAACP.

Campaigning alongside Obama could boost his credibility among black voters by showing he is serious about issues affecting all minorities, Fields said.

Obama is the only African-American in the Senate, and his stirring keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston made him a national figure.

Only three blacks have been elected to the U.S. Senate since the end of Reconstruction in the 1870s -- the other two are Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois, a Democrat, and Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, a Republican -- and only five blacks have been senators in the nation's history.

Obama was received enthusiastically by the largely black crowds at both events, where he told the story of his youth and even sang "Walk On By" when he spotted singer Dionne Warwick in the audience.

"I just love Obama," Martha Weekes of East Orange said at the rally. "He's everything they said he was."

Obama, who is biracial, grew up in Hawaii. His mother is from Kansas, and his father is from Kenya. He told the crowd that the nation can be better than it is today.

"It's not that America is perfect, it's that America is perfectable," Obama said.

Government still has the power to change lives, he said.

"That's the fight we're in right now, to transform this idea of who we are as Americans," Obama said. "If we can afford to spend $300 billion for a war in Iraq, then we can certainly afford health care for all."

Menendez emphasized that the federal budget is not helping those in need.

"It's a budget that continues to spend more and more in Iraq and less and less here," he said. "I believe we can go in a different direction."

The Rev. Calvin McKinney of Calvary Baptist Church in Garfield, said Menendez's record shows he fights for the issues supported by the black community.

"That's what matters most," he said.

But Fields said the senator has fences to mend in the black community.

"I think many blacks in Hudson County were offended by the manner in which the senator undermined the mayor," he said of the Menendez-Cunningham feud.

In 2003, Cunningham, already mayor of Jersey City, ran for the state Senate in the 31st District. But he was challenged by a candidate backed by Menendez and then-Gov. James E. McGreevey. The campaign turned nasty. Cunningham won, but the bitterness lingered, and he died in 2004 before the rift could be healed.

"Glenn was a popular individual, even beyond Jersey City, and he was a very decent person," Fields said. "I think for folks in Hudson County there is some lingering resentment over the senator's relationship with the late Glenn Cunningham."

McKinney said he thinks the issue will be put to bed before the election.

"It's an issue that we will get past," he said.

E-mail: johnson@northjersey.com"

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