The Biden administration’s proposal to put the World Bank in charge of a fund that would pay poorer countries suffering irreversible climate damage is threatening to rattle U.N. climate talks that begin next month in Dubai.

The negotiating team led by climate envoy John Kerry reluctantly endorsed the idea of establishing a fund for “loss and damage” suffered by developing nations at U.N. climate talks last year, but countries left the details of how it would work — and where its many billions of dollars would come from — for later.

Developing nations have favored creating a fund similar to others established under the United Nations’ climate program, which operate as independent bodies under the U.N. They oppose the U.S. proposal to fold it inside the World Bank — an institution that many poorer nations see as a tool of the industrialized world to impose its economic policies.

Those nations say rich countries like the U.S. have long exerted too much control over the World Bank at the expense of those receiving aid. They note that even the U.S. is tacitly acknowledging the problem by pushing the bank to focus more on climate issues.

“It’s just a question of logic,” said Michai Robertson, lead finance negotiator for a bloc of island states that stands to receive much of the loss and damage money. “Why is there this pressure to push it back to this institution that we need to reform that was created in the ’40s by mostly colonial powers at the time?”

The fight over the new fund is a top issue this week for negotiators gathering for a final technical meeting before the U.N. climate talks.

The U.S. has long been at the center of conflict over the loss and damage fund. It has emitted more of the greenhouse gases warming the planet than any other nation since the mid-19th century. But it backed creation of the fund only after securing promises that the language establishing it would not equate compensation with legal liability. And it so far has not pledged any money for the fund.

The U.S. has practical reasons for placing the fund in the World Bank, according to people who have followed the bank. It’s the bank’s top shareholder and has decades of history with its efforts to lend money to developing nations. And some veterans of international climate talks say establishing a new fund whole cloth would take years, so placing it within the World Bank or another institution would be a far quicker way of delivering money to nations in need.

“Historically it’s served as a useful anchor because it’s a trusted institution where there can be trustee services,” said a State Department official involved in climate finance who is not authorized to speak publicly as a matter of practice. “But you know, there’s other views as well. So that’ll have to be settled over time.”

The loss and damage fund discussions are taking place at the same time that the U.S. and other countries are working to reshape the World Bank to address climate change by financing clean energy projects and helping countries adapt to a warmer world, a case U.S. officials made last week to the bank’s annual meeting in Marrakech, Morocco. Such changes would help to unleash billions more in lending annually and attract more private funding as well.

But some people are skeptical about the U.S. push to establish the fund inside an institution that many nations say is dominated by Washington.

The U.S. is leaning on the World Bank to meet its climate finance goals because it’s a “USA policy tool,” said a senior World Bank official, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media. And, the person added, the bank is “the only one you can play with … without new cash.”

The World Bank may also be ill-suited to the goal of the loss and damage fund since it uses loans and revenue-generating transactions in its current work. In contrast, vulnerable nations are seeking grants to fund their climate adaptation and loss-and-damage projects.

How and where to create the loss and damage fund is only one of several thorny issues facing it. One of the biggest fights concerns calls for China — by far the biggest current greenhouse gas polluter — to pay into the fund, an issue that divides the U.S. and a bloc of developing countries that negotiate in concert with China at the climate talks. That dispute is unlikely to be resolved before nations meet in Dubai starting Nov. 30.

Underpinning the developing nations’ resistance to the U.S. effort is skepticism that Washington will make good on long-delayed promises to deliver cheap, no-strings money to help poorer countries cope with climate change.

That fear could be justified because the U.S. will likely fall short once again. House Republicans steadfastly oppose funding President Joe Biden’s request for $11 billion in international climate finance.

“[The U.S. has] a huge responsibility — it’s the same old thing, the same shtick,” Robertson said.

The U.S. declined to provide more funding for a separate Green Climate Fund, which seeks to help countries adapt to climate change, at a meeting of donor countries earlier this month. Biden announced in April he would inject $1 billion to the green fund, bringing the total U.S. contribution to $2 billion, but still short of the $3 billion pledge that President Barack Obama made in 2014.

The State Department official said another contribution was coming but declined to provide details.

Some officials from the developing world say they believe the U.S. is pushing for World Bank reforms to substitute for its historical difficulty delivering funds.

“No doubt about it, both in perception and reality,” said Iskander Erzini Vernoit, director of the Morocco-based think tank Imal Initiative for Climate & Development. “They say this not just in closed-door rooms but also publicly. People like Kerry will say, well, public funds are limited, so you’ve got to look at all these other measures.”

The United States’ long resistance to the establishment of a loss and damage fund plays into that concern. Erzini Vernoit said the U.S. “cannot be considered a bridge builder” in the negotiations. And he questioned whether countries outside of the World Bank system could access the money if the fund is housed within that institution.

Many emerging economies complain the World Bank’s governing structure puts too much power in donors’ hands rather than the countries it is designed to support, said Luisa Abbott Galvao, senior international policy campaigner with environmental group Friends of the Earth.

“It’s developing countries, it’s low-income countries in the Global South that are being hit the hardest by climate change and that should have the biggest say in how that support is given,” she said. “And yet the U.S. which is the longest, largest historic contributor, is calling the shots as the largest shareholder.”

But Anne Christianson, director of international climate policy at think tank the Center for American Progress, said the U.S. has been putting a lot of diplomatic hours into the loss and damage negotiations, even if there’s still “quite a bit of daylight” between its position and that of the developing countries.

The Biden administration has offered some indications of what it wants to fall into loss and damage funding. Those include insurance schemes to cover climate damages as well as early warning systems to help nations prepare for climate-fueled storms, droughts and other destructive events.

The State Department official said the Biden administration has significantly stepped up its climate finance funding, including grants. In 2021, international climate funding approved under the previous Congress and former President Donald Trump totaled $1 billion. The following year, under Biden, it was nearly $6 billion, of which $2.25 billion was grant-based.

Biden also requested an additional $2.25 billion for the World Bank, but that fell out of budget negotiations when lawmakers reached a stopgap government funding bill last month.

The focus on the World Bank and other established financial institutions is a recognition that the U.S. and its allies must do more to attract private finance to help drive a transition to clean energy transition because public spending alone cannot pay for the trillions of dollars of investment needed for climate change, the State Department official said.

“Is this a way of somehow avoiding our grant financing? Not at all, I think that that criticism is just not based in fact,” the official said.

The U.S. can have “the most impact” by reforming international financial institutions like the World Bank given its influence as the largest shareholder and the sizable capital flows it can unleash, CAP’s Christianson said.

But focusing solely on the World Bank would not steer enough money to the types of adaptation and climate resilience projects that the private sector has long avoided, said Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the think tank Center for Global Development. Such projects do not typically generate the type of returns and revenue streams that investors require to wade into countries with less predictable business environments.

On top of that, the U.S. has so far resisted backing a general capital increase at the World Bank. Pressure is growing on the U.S.: The United Kingdom has endorsed an increase, Germany last month floated a new €305 million pot of financing, and a new World Bank and International Monetary Fund report last week forecasted $2.4 trillion in annual developing country needs to combat climate change, pandemics and other global conflicts through 2030.

Kenny worried that refusing to infuse the bank with more cash would merely siphon funds away from other needs, such as poverty eradication, in favor of climate. He suggested that the U.S. and its allies have emphasized World Bank changes to distract from their record on adaptation and climate finance, which includes a long-missed 2020 deadline to marshal $100 billion in financing.

“One reason is to cover up the fact that not very much is going on,” Kenny said. “The leaders of low- and middle-income countries know this. They have not been hoodwinked. They know what is going on and there is a lot of anger about this.”

SAN FRANCISCO — California Gov. Gavin Newsom will make a high-stakes trip to China next week to strengthen relations with the communist regime on climate change while skirting foreign policy matters handled by his close allies in the Biden administration.

Newsom has scant diplomatic experience, but the governor and his team have coordinated the travel with the White House. A top surrogate for Biden’s reelection campaign, Newsom has said he’s solely focused on climate policy and wouldn’t do anything to undermine the administration’s delicate relations with China.

But the trip carries much deeper significance for Newsom, a potential future U.S. presidential contender. It presents him with the prospect of high rewards — and a threat of major pitfalls.

Former Gov. Jerry Brown, Newsom’s predecessor who deeply expanded ties with China during his time in office, said Newsom has the potential to make a serious impact on climate, in part because he’s engaging during such a challenging moment for U.S.-China relations.

“It takes some courage to go against the grain. And the grain in Congress and in the media, reflecting that political perspective, is highly antagonistic to China,” Brown, now chair of UC Berkeley’s California-China Climate Institute, said in an interview. “Newsom is eloquent enough that he can champion climate — and do it in a way that will be more effective than his critics.”

Newsom has the opportunity to broker agreements that could cement California’s reputation as a global leader of the green-energy economy. On a political level, he could bolster his foreign policy resume, an area where he has less experience than other potential White House hopefuls.

The governor, however, will walk a diplomatic tightrope as he meets with Chinese officials, including the leaders of several of its most influential provinces. His trip comes during a fraught time, as China’s once booming economy is faltering and its regime has grown increasingly militant and aggressive on a global stage.

It’s only Newsom’s second international trip in his official capacity as governor, despite holding office for the past five years. The Democratic governor’s itinerary will focus on areas where California and China can partner to reduce planet-warming emissions, including electric cars, high-speed rail and offshore wind.

Although Newsom is not acting as a foreign policy emissary for the administration, his team is steeped in that world. His top climate aide, Lauren Sanchez, was a senior adviser to presidential climate envoy John Kerry as well as a State Department negotiator during the U.N. climate talks in Paris.

The governor’s administration said the trip will be “predominantly focused on climate,” signaling that Newsom won’t touch on a host of hot-button issues. Leaders of both parties in Washington have increasingly criticized China over its stance on trade subsidies, intellectual property rights, human rights abuses in Hong Kong and Xinjiang province and its aggression over disputed claims to Taiwan and the South China Sea.

Republicans are also attacking Biden’s hundreds of billions of dollars in climate spending by seizing on any possible links to Beijing. Newsom’s trip could inflame those attacks.

“The Chinese probably will be more willing to work with the state than the federal government,” said Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York City. “But he also has to be very careful that he doesn’t appear in Washington to be kind of violating federal government policy towards China.”

Brown and former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger both pursued close relationships with China on climate policy and trade, going back 15 years. Newsom, in contrast, has been less hands-on with international affairs, a duty he effectively handed off to Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a former U.S. ambassador to Hungary under President Barack Obama.

Newsom has sought to pick up the mantle recently, inking a climate pact with the Chinese province of Hainan and renewing another Brown-era partnership with China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment last April.

Now, Newsom is dramatically upping the ante as he prepares to take on relations with the East Asian nation. But today’s China is a far more antagonistic actor than the emergent world power encountered by prior governors.

Relations between China and the United States took a particularly tense turn this year, after Biden’s administration shot down a Chinese spy balloon that came into U.S. airspace. Biden called Xi a “dictator” at a fundraiser in the Bay Area this past summer, and said the Chinese president had been “very embarrassed” by the incident. Earlier in the year, Xi accused the United States and European countries of engaging in “all-round containment, encirclement and suppression” of China to hamper its economic growth.

The rift has somewhat thawed in recent weeks, with a potential Biden-Xi meeting coming up at APEC and visits by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and a congressional delegation led by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Newsom allies and experts on China-California relations said the governor’s decision to wade in signals a key intention: his desire to help shape a more nuanced national narrative on China. That aim also can’t be decoupled from speculation about his presidential potential, though Newsom has downplayed his aspirations and said he’s focused on boosting Biden’s reelection bid.

Jim Wunderman, CEO of the Bay Area Council, a business advocacy group that helped establish California’s trade office in China, said Newsom would inevitably face criticism from some opponents for engaging with a sometimes adversarial country.

“On the other hand, maybe it shows his temperament, that he’s a leader who believes more in discourse and diplomacy over finger pointing,” Wunderman said.

Several political observers said that in order to preserve the chance for progress on climate and to avoid diplomatic missteps that could overshadow the trip, Newsom should avoid speaking out about controversial aspects of China’s policies. They said he should avoid directly prodding Beijing in the way that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did when she traveled to Taiwan during her final year as speaker in 2022, despite objections from Xi and Biden’s administration.

China’s recent suppression of freedoms in Hong Kong, a former British colony, has drawn widespread condemnation. The governor does plan to travel to Hong Kong, though spokesperson Erin Mellon said he would focus on climate and “look to our federal partners on federal issues.”

There are clear signs Newsom is aiming to distance himself from saber-rattling around China on the national level.

Newsom recently expressed frustration with political and media narratives over tensions with China, including speculation that the country was behind a mystery buyer gobbling up land around Travis Air Force Base in California’s far East Bay Area. The buyer, as it turns out, was Silicon Valley investors.

“Divorce is not an option,” Newsom told POLITICO when he announced his climate-focused China trip last month. “The importance, the imperative of maintaining a relationship on climate with China is about the fate and future of this planet.”

Newsom has only taken one international trip in his official capacity as governor, to El Salvador a few months after his inauguration in 2019. He has also traveled to Mexico and Central and South America for vacations.

His experience on a global stage, however, goes back much further to his time as San Francisco mayor. In 2005, he traveled to Shanghai with the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), seeking to expand trade opportunities, and he made several additional trips as mayor.

Darlene Chiu-Bryant, a former adviser to Newsom who accompanied him on the 2005 trip, said it was clear back then that he was focused on a positive business relationship with China, not points of controversy.

Chiu-Bryant now leads GlobalSF, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding foreign investment. She said Newsom’s approach reflects his sensibility as a lifelong San Franciscan. About a fifth of San Francisco residents are Chinese American — the highest concentration in any major U.S. city. It’s also home to the oldest Chinatown in the country, founded by immigrant laborers and merchants during the Gold Rush.

Newsom, as a child growing up in the city, walked through that Chinatown every morning on his way to Catholic school, she said. Chiu-Bryant said such experiences led Newsom to view China as more partner than rival.

“For him, it’s always been, ‘We live in the global world,’” she said. “He’s always been open, he’s always been collaborative.”

Debra Kahn and Christopher Cadelago contributed.

In the nearly two week flood of violence and disinformation triggered by the Israel-Hamas war, powerful U.S. figures — including senators and the New York attorney general — have called for online platforms to stem the tide.

But there’s little they can do about it.

American politicians have been reduced to issuing sternly worded letters while their European counterparts deliver threats with potentially expensive consequences. In Brussels, officials have already launched an investigation of Elon Musk’s X, and have the power to fine companies for hosting violent content and disinformation.

In Washington, powerful members of Congress largely sputtered, issuing public demands for social media accountability with no clear way to enforce them.

On Tuesday, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), a vocal critic of tech platforms, sent a letter to leaders of X, Meta, TikTok and Alphabet demanding answers about the numbers of posts removed and numbers of employees dedicated to content moderation. The office of Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) told POLITICO the four companies agreed to provide briefings this week to the staff of the House Energy and Commerce Committee she chairs, following her demand for information on their content moderation policies. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), the ranking member on the committee, called on Meta, X and YouTube to “vigorously enforce” their terms of service.

In New York, Attorney General Letitia James wrote to Google, X, Meta, TikTok, Reddit and Rumble on Friday demanding answers about how the sites were addressing calls for violence on their platforms.

Yet none of their appeals have the teeth to force any change, thanks to years of stalled efforts in Congress to regulate online content, the First Amendment’s free speech protections and a unique liability shield that tech firms have enjoyed since the 1990s.

Washington’s flimsy response the past two weeks stands in sharp contrast to the European Union, where officials quickly deployed their new Digital Services Act to launch an investigation into X last week over its handling of violent content around the Hamas attacks. Brussels has also sent warnings to Meta, TikTok and Google’s YouTube. Regulators have the authority to fine a company up to 6 percent of its global revenue for failing to remove violent content and disinformation.

In the absence of federal law, the White House has also reached out directly to social media companies to raise concerns about their platforms, according to Nathaniel Fick, the inaugural U.S. ambassador at large for cyberspace and digital policy.

“We are in regular dialogue with the tech platforms on these issues of responsible behavior at a volatile time, obviously starting at a position of respect for the First Amendment,” Fick said on the POLITICO Tech podcast.

The White House’s outreach was striking in light of the political blowback the Biden administration has faced over its dealings with social media firms, including a GOP-led lawsuit claiming the administration violated the First Amendment by allegedly censoring content during the coronavirus pandemic. House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan presides over an investigation into whether the executive branch “coerced or colluded” with tech firms to censor speech.

One reason U.S. officials are hamstrung is Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which shields platforms from liability over most of the content they disseminate. President Joe Biden has called on Congress to “fundamentally reform” the statute.

In Congress, Bennet has proposed creating a new federal entity to regulate social media, but the bill lacks any cosponsors and has never been taken up by a committee.

“We need a federal regulator empowered to write rules to prevent foreign disinformation on digital platforms, increase transparency around content moderation and levy fines to hold these companies accountable,” Bennet told POLITICO.

In New York, James recently introduced legislation with Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers to set guardrails around harmful content on social media, but it won’t be considered until the legislature returns next year.

Platforms contacted by POLITICO say they are taking steps to address the toxic content on their sites. YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi said the site had removed “tens of thousands of harmful videos and terminated hundreds of channels” since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack against Israel and subsequent Israeli bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip. TikTok said it removed over 500,000 videos and closed 8,000 live streams since Oct. 7, and added an unspecified number of additional content moderators who speak Hebrew and Arabic. Meta said it has removed more than 700,000 videos violating its policies against violent content and hate speech or labeled them as disturbing during the first three days of conflict. X did not respond to a request for comment.

In Europe, meanwhile, one European Commission official told POLITICO the White House had praised its approach.

“We’ve had some high U.S. representatives thanking us for what we’ve done with our regulation on Big Tech in the context of dealing with disinformation, misinformation and illegal content after the Hamas attack,” the official said, speaking anonymously to discuss the matter openly.

The White House declined to comment.

Clothilde Goujard contributed to this report.

Don’t call him junior.

Rep. Rob Menendez, the 38-year-old son of Sen. Bob Menendez, joined the House earlier this year thanks in large part to the family name.

Now, he’s in a mess because of it.

His powerful father’s political career appears all but over after prosecutors laid out unseemly allegations in a federal indictment this fall. They allege Sen. Menendez was an agent of the Egyptian government while leading the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and accepted bribes in the form of gold bars, envelopes of cash and a new car for his wife Nadine, who had ruined hers during a collision that killed a pedestrian. Bob and Nadine Menendez have pleaded not guilty.

While his son has nothing to do with this legal case, the political fallout could threaten the 2024 reelection of Rob Menendez, a first-term member who sailed to victory last year and now sits in a congressional seat representing much of the North Jersey area his father did for seven terms in the House.

Now Rob Menendez is trying to stand with his father while also avoiding being dragged down by him.

Many of New Jersey’s major Democrats — including Gov. Phil Murphy and Sen. Cory Booker — have abandoned the father, urging him to step down for the good of the party and the country.

The father has yet to make his own intentions clear, giving cryptic answers as terrible polling numbers are made public, but he’s defied calls to step down.

In the days following the indictment, it looked like being untouched by his father’s legal troubles was not enough to spare political headaches for Rob Menendez. The mayor of Hoboken, the second largest city in the district, quickly got the word out that he may challenge Rob Menendez in next year’s primary, and there is talk of others who might also jump in the race.

To head off any doubt about his intentions, Rob Menendez almost immediately made clear he’s going to run for reelection.

And, so far, it looks like he may win.

For Rob Menendez, the first major test is the response of key Democrats in the Menendez political homeland of Hudson County, N.J. As long as Rob Menendez makes it through his party’s primary next June, he’s almost certain to return to Congress in the very blue district.

The Menendez name still carries significant weight in Hudson County, where loyalties run deep and political bosses make or break careers. Even though he faces calls to step down from the Senate, Bob Menendez is still regarded as a “rock star” to voters and the county Democratic Party has declined to call for his resignation — one indication that the younger Menendez may not pay a price for the alleged crimes of his father.

“I’ve had the good fortune to know Rob since he was a young boy, and he’s always been someone who constantly wants to give service to the community and he definitely wants to be his own man,” said Hudson County Commissioner Anthony Romano.

In interviews, several key Hudson County figures seemed to see the two Menendezes as separable. Even if they didn’t all say it, they seemed to adopt the biblical view that a son should not be judged by the sins of the father. (At least one person who ventured to say something similar quickly backtracked because, they said, they did not want to be quoted as suggesting the father had sinned — a sign that, however weakened Sen. Menendez may be, he remains formidable.)

Rob Menendez — who does not go by “junior” — would admit that being his father’s son helped him. He’s not naïve. But, he’d argue, it hasn’t helped him as much as people think.

“For nearly 20 years, I have supported campaigns from the local to federal level, while forging relationships with New Jersey’s political leaders who supported my own campaign to represent the 8th Congressional District,” he said in a statement.

A critic’s version of his resume would look like this: The young Menendez popped up a few years ago as a potential candidate for Jersey City mayor, where he would have challenged Steven Fulop, a political nemesis of his father, in an act of vengeance. Instead, he got a plum appointment from Murphy as a member of the powerful Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. And, when U.S. Rep. Albio Sires (D-N.J.) retired, Rob faced virtually no opposition to succeed him as an heir apparent to a seat his father used to hold.

But another view is that Rob has been interested in politics since he was a young man. He was around politics, learned politics and worked hard to break through. He got into a good college — UNC Chapel Hill — went to law school, did a fellowship at the Port Authority, went into private practice at the politically well-connected firm of Lowenstein Sandler and when the opportunity presented itself, looked for things to run for. He won and now in Congress remains as visible in Jersey City as anyone its voters have sent to Congress since the late Rep. Frank Guarini.

There are also glimpses that perhaps his father has not always viewed his son as a political heir, even if he has been drawn, however slightly, into his father’s legal troubles.

In fall 2017, long before he appeared as a major figure in the New Jersey politician scene, Rob Menendez took the witness stand to make the case that a Florida eye doctor accused of bribing his father had offered private jet flights, lavish vacations and hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions out of friendship, not as bribes.

A defense attorney asked Rob Menendez how he referred to the doctor, Salomon Melgen, who he said he’d known since he was a child.

“Doc, Dr. Melgen. But also occasionally as tio,” Rob Menendez said. “It means uncle in Spanish.”

His testimony seemed to bolster the claim made by his father that he’d been prosecuted for friendship, and the case ended in a mistrial. Bob Menendez won another term as New Jersey’s senior Democratic senator.

But when he took the stand in the Melgen case, Rob Menendez told jurors that he came back to the state from college in North Carolina to work on his father’s 2006 Senate campaign “against my dad’s wishes.”

Of course, when he decided to run for things, the name was a good one to have.

“The reality is nepotism exists throughout the world, it’s not limited to Hudson County,” said Gerry McCann, a former Jersey City mayor.

When the younger Menendez was floated as a candidate for Jersey City mayor, the sympathetic view was that he was raising a family in Jersey City and heard from people who wanted things done differently.

Hudson County Commissioner Bill O’Dea said Rob Menendez was having serious conversations about how he’d change the city, rooted in his view of the city as someone raising a family there.

At the Port Authority, where he went instead, agency chair Kevin O’Toole said in a statement that “Rob distinguished himself as a commissioner singularly focused on ensuring that the agency never lost sight of its core mission to keep the region moving. His deliberative, insightful approach to matters that came before us was invaluable and every resident of the Port District is better served because of his tenure on the board.”

When Sires retired, Rob Menendez emerged as the favored candidate to replace him. He locked up support from the local and state party establishment before even announcing his run, enough that all but assured him the seat.

“The father never called me and asked me to support him, there was no need for him to even try to do it,” O’Dea said.

On the campaign trail, the Menendezes certainly share allies. Before the indictment was filed, a bit over a quarter of Rob Menendez’s big donors were also donors to his father’s campaign since the start of 2021, according to a POLITICO analysis of campaign data.

But Menendez has people in his corner. A few weeks ago, he walked in the Hispanic State Parade beside Brian Stack, a Democratic state senator who is also the mayor of Union City and the head of one of the greatest get-out-the-vote machines in New Jersey politics. Stack gave Menendez’s 2022 campaign an early — and key — endorsement.

If people like Stack stick with Rob Menendez, it’s hard to see who could beat him. Stack did not respond to a call seeking comment, but in 2021, as Sires’ retirement plans became known, Stack was quick to back Menendez and said at the time, “It can’t hurt that he’s got the help from his dad, but he’s really his own person.”

Now the son is an election away from knowing if he can stand on his own.

Jessica Piper contributed to this report.