Menendez has his own uncomfortable association with Ground Zero mosque
August 31st, 2010 3:25 pm ET.


The current controversy over the proposed mosque and cultural center on 51 Park Avenue in Manhattan now includes reports that its key religious leader, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, owns several run-down apartment developments in Hudson County, New Jersey. Those reports have also turned up an association, however brief, with New Jersey's junior Senator.

Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) was once mayor of Union City, New Jersey, during which time Rauf applied for, and received, certain tax-funded grants to renovate low-income apartments in that city. Rauf owns similar properties in Palisades Park, properties that Rauf obtained similar tax-funded renovation grants.

Reports in The New York Post and The Record (Hackensack, NJ), including this column by Record columnist Mike Kelly, show that Rauf has been a less-than-attentive landlord, and the subject of a litany of tenant complaints for various health and safety violations in his buildings over a period of several years.

The problem for Menendez is this: Menendez has recently added his own name to the list of prominent names in support of the Park 51 project. This could indicate either that Menendez believes that the Park 51 project itself is subject to unfair criticism in light of its closeness to the site of the destroyed World Trade Center, or that Menendez is doing a favor for Rauf personally. The latter is difficult-to-impossible to establish; a search of the site OpenSecrets.org, operated by the Center for Responsive Politics, reveals no donations from Rauf or the Park 51 project flowing to Menendez in any recent election cycle.

However, Menendez' support of the Park 51 project is inconsistent with his attempt to seek information concerning the early "humanitarian" release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, also known as "the Lockerbie bomber," from a Scottish prison. It also suggests that he ought to be more discerning in lending support to a one-time grantee who, after receiving a tax-funded grant approved by an office he ran, has, by many accounts, abused his grant. Typical of these accounts is this comment by a long-time tenant of one of Rauf's Union City properties: “He can’t even repair the bells in the hallway. He doesn’t take care of his properties. But he’s going to take care of a mosque?â€