Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., listens during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Dec. 7, 2023, in Washington.
Mariam Zuhaib/AP
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Mariam Zuhaib/AP
A New Jersey elementary school will change its name, losing the moniker of disgraced Sen. Bob Menendez after his conviction on bribery charges was confirmed by a Manhattan court earlier this month.
The Robert Menendez Elementary School in West New York, N.J., will be called PS #3, its previous name, according to the New Jersey Globe.
The city’s mayor told the newspaper the name change would be completed before the start of the new school year, a decade since Menendez’s name was assigned to the facility back in 2013.
It’s only the latest example of a disgraced public office holder’s name being stripped from a public building or educational institute in New Jersey. Former President Woodrow Wilson’s name was famously dropped from Princeton in 2020, for his poor handling of race issues.
Former Sen. Harrison A. Williams Jr. had been honored — with a Metropark train station named after him — in 1979. Two years later he was convicted for bribery and jailed in the Abscam scandal.
The governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy, confirmed Menendez will step down from his Senate seat Aug. 20 after his resignation was formally entered into the congressional record this past week.
Earlier this month, a federal jury in Manhattan had found him guilty of using political influence to benefit businessmen in his state. He was also found guilty of working on behalf of governments in the Middle East, Egypt and Qatar in return for sizable bribes — including gold bars — worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.