The air in Hunterdon County hangs thick with the cloying perfume of political decay today, a miasma of backslapping and backstabbing where the Democratic machine grinds onward, oblivious to the maggots in its marrow.
At the rotten heart of it all? Tom Malinowski, the Hunterdon County Democratic chairman, who dared to utter the unspeakable: that disgraced, defenestrated, and damned former Senator Bob Menendez—that walking monument to avarice in a cheap suit—did “a lot of good.”
The words hit the humid New Jersey air like a corpse hitting concrete. And from the shadows, where the party’s discarded truths fester, rose a howl of raw, unfiltered rage.
Lisa McCormick, that jagged shard of progressive fury the establishment tried to sweep under its plush, donor-funded rug, tore into Malinowski with the righteous wrath of a prophet scorned.
The woman who took on Menendez in the 2018 primary, who spat in the eye of his machine, who garnered 60 percent in Hunterdon, carried six counties and near-missed victory in Gloucester by a razor-thin 18 votes.
She didn’t just lose a race; she witnessed the autopsy of democracy itself.
Malinowski—kicked out of Congress for trading stocks instead of earning his $175,000 paycheck —had the gall to polish Menendez’s rotting legacy.
“I ran against the cancer Menendez represents—a tumor metastasizing for decades while New Jersey choked!,” said McCormick. “Look at the evidence that shows Bob Menendez did not do much good. The Equal Rights Amendment was ratified by 38 states, but it’s excluded from the Constitution. Abortion rights have been gutted. The Voting Rights Act is mostly nullified.”
“Gerrymandering has carved districts that deny voters any real choices,” said McCormick. “There are more guns than people in our country, and one way to tell they are not ‘well-regulated’ is because they are flooding streets and schools, where children bleed out in algebra class!”
Her indictment unfurled like a scroll of national shame: Wall Street sharks still fattened on the carcass of the 2008 collapse; insurance executives sharpening scalpels on the whetstone of human suffering; cops cloaked in qualified immunity beating citizens raw; a treasonous ex-president slithering free after his putsch failed.
“Our political establishment isn’t elected—it’s auctioned. Billionaires write the bids, and hacks like Menendez and Malinowski cash the checks,” said McCormick.
And Menendez himself? The man who slithered away from a 2017 bribery trial with a hung jury —a walking advertisement for institutional corruption.
“He should’ve been fired for not making bribery illegal!” argued McCormick. “Menendez wasn’t just a traitor and a thief! While he stuffed his pockets, the American Dream bled out in an alley! We needed to outlaw bribery, reverse Reaganomics, and build a nation that works for the many—not the few.”
Now Malinowski—a chair perched atop this midden heap—dared praise the architect of the rot?
“Instead of polishing the turd of Menendez’s legacy, Tom Malinowski should answer for enabling the same failures! What ‘good’? The good of letting insurers deny lifesaving care? The good of letting banks loot pensions? The good of letting a would-be dictator waltz free?”
The hypocrisy reeks to high heaven. Malinowski, who sided with Menendez as McCormick’s insurgent campaign rattled the crooked machine, is praising the epitome of corruption.
It’s the old dance: the establishment forgives its own. Menendez escapes justice; Malinowski whitewashes his sins; the wheel grinds onward.
But McCormick’s fire isn’t out. She got more votes than any statewide primary challenger who took on an incumbent since 1980.
A county chairman praises a crook. And a woman with the courage to overcome complacency says Malinowski needs to cleanse the stench of Menendez’s decay rather than cling to failures and hope for another chance to disappoint the people.