Credit: (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

WASHINGTON – Facing a Monday campaign deadline, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) said he would reveal this week if he plans to run to maintain his seat in the Senate.

In a brief interview with NJ Spotlight News on Tuesday night, Menendez, accused of performing political favors for Egypt and Qatar in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, said he is looking forward to May, when his federal trial in Manhattan is scheduled to start.

“The status is the status,” Menendez said of the case. “Look forward to trial, finally get my defense up.”

Asked if he would run again, Menendez said, “I’ll make an announcement this week.”

Beyond the federal corruption charges against him, a looming re-election deadline is bearing down on Menendez, all while members of his Senate staff have left his office after the indictment in the fall, and dozens of Senate Democrats have urged him to resign. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has stopped short of that request and some Republicans have come to his defense.

To qualify to run for the Senate as a Democrat, Menendez would have to generate 1,000 signatures by Monday, but he would have until June 4 to get on the ballot as an independent candidate, requiring only 800 signatures.

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U.S. Rep. Andy Kim (D-3) and Tammy Murphy, who is married to Gov. Phil Murphy, headline the Democratic race to replace Menendez, a primary contest that has drawn national attention to how New Jersey’s party system selects and favors its preferred candidates.

In September, federal prosecutors accused the three-term senator with corruption, along with his wife, Nadine, and three co-defendants.

Menendez has repeatedly rebuffed those accusations, saying he has “never violated the public trust” and is innocent.

One of those defendants, an insurance broker named Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty this month to participating in a bribery scheme of Menendez and his wife, including to obtain the senator’s help in intervening in an insurance fraud investigation.

The senator, stripped of his chairmanship of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, seized upon the COVID-19 pandemic to pressure mayors to use a testing laboratory with ties to his wife, according to prosecutors.

Last year, Menendez spent more than $2.6 million on legal fees – almost all of which came after he was indicted Sept. 22.

Schumer, marshaling votes in a closely divided Senate, where Democrats hold a 51-49 majority, has not called on Menendez to resign, a development that would make shepherding bills and nominations to passage harder.

“The Senate has certain standards that we must live up to,” Schumer told reporters March 6, when he was asked why Menendez should continue to serve on committees and attend classified briefings. “I’ve very disappointed that Senator Menendez has not lived up to those standards.”

Some Republican senators, including Tom Cotton or Arkansas and Marco Rubio of Florida, have come to Menendez’s defense, criticizing the prosecutorial record of the Justice Department, a now-frequent target of Republican ire.

“The charges against Senator Menendez are serious and troubling,” Cotton said in a statement on social media in September. “At the same time, the Department of Justice has a troubling record of failure and corruption in cases against public figures, from Ted Stevens to Bob McDonnell to Donald Trump to Bob Menendez the last time around.”

Former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was indicted on corruption charges during the George W. Bush administration, but a special investigation completed in 2012 found prosecutors hid evidence in that case.

Bob McDonnell, a former Republican governor of Virginia, was accused of using the governorship to benefit a political donor.

Though lower courts ruled against McDonnell, he appealed to the Supreme Court, where his conviction was vacated. That precedent made proving public corruption in court more difficult, and Menendez has hired the attorney who won that case for McDonnell to his legal team.

Following Menendez’s indictment, some of his office staffers have found work elsewhere.

Jennifer Morrill, the senator’s former press secretary, started as the director of media relations for Princeton University in February.

Another former press staffer, Robert Julien, is now working for Rep. Sylvia Garcia, a House Democrat who represents a Houston-area district.

Diego Mazariego, who worked until January on outreach and constituent services for the senator, is now chief of staff to Assemblyman Gabriel Rodriquez, a Democrat who represents Hudson County.

And Carolina Montes decamped in December from Menendez’s staff to work in the Murphy administration, according to her LinkedIn profile.

These days, press inquiries to the senator’s office routinely go unanswered, and the staffs of Sen. Cory Booker’s office and the Menendez office appear to have stopped releasing public statements together, as they frequently did before the charges against Menendez came down.

To run as an independent for a Senate seat means forging ahead without the help of a broader party platform, and lacking the money, exposure and political network parties provide.

Since 1789, 2,003 people have served as senators in Congress, according to a tally the Senate Historical Office maintains, dated through October 2023.

Just 77 have represented third or minor parties or governed entirely as an independent.