well the political Fallout of this case has been tremendous starting long before the court case even began Micah Rasmussen is the director of The Rebovich Institute for New Jersey politics at Rider University and he breaks it all down including what happens in the US Senate race if we do see a resignation or a vote to remove US senator Bob Menendez how swiftly would the governor need to act uh considering sentencing on October 29th and an election coming up in November how does all of this play out well the tricky part is that David also said Andy Kim is the prohibitive favorite he is currently in the House of Representatives which is also closely divided so between Senate leader Schumer and um the house leadership and Governor Murphy they're gonna have to figure out where Andy Kim's vote is needed the most um and how long it's needed um and where they can spare the vote the least because um it's it's it's a it's a it's a real question at this point and I think it will color the discussions about how hard they push Mendez to expel him or whether or not he's afforded the chance to wind down his term and we we can't forget the fact that right now today in New Jersey in the 10th congressional district there is a primary election to replace uh the seat of Donald Congressman Donald Payne Jr who passed away that is also one less vote in the house uh from for new Jersey for for the house Democrats and so all of this kind of uh shuffle board of of where do we go right for the Democratic party uh that absolutely and and given the fact that the house is so closely divided is exactly why we're seeing this special election process in uh Essex County and and in in the 10th District because uh normally the seat would be left vacant we're gonna have an election for the full term in November and it would typically have been left vacant it's the first time in decades that we've had this uh um midterm uh special election process that seat can't be filled until September until the new person is elected and so that seat's going to be vacant for a little while longer now do we want to start that process all over again with an Andy Kim vacancy that's going to be the question um while all of this plays out what conversations do you believe Democrats are having behind the scenes here in New Jersey what do you think those conversations sound like well I think they're definitely all trying to figure out how hard they want to push Mendez to resign they have already called for him to resign remember that they did that in the wake of his uh indictments they're certainly starting to do that as you're seeing Governor Murphy and others um there is not much more than that than they can do um it's really a question of whether or not Menendez wants to go and when he wants to go it's on his terms or whether or not the rest of his colleagues in the Senate vote to expel him who we haven't seen in the courtroom was Congressman Rob Menendez we did see uh Alicia Mendez his sister there with her father the congressman has stayed back from all of this wise for him can he escape this well he has so far and the big test was the primary election that we just got through with um in which Ravi Bala challenged him and was not able to make um his father's sins stick to him um and so that was the real challenge two years ago when Menendez first got into the house um he was trying to wrap himself around his father as much as he could and now since the legal troubles he's been running in the opposite direction he succeeded in doing that and probably at this point he doesn't want to undo that uh success that he has had there um they have navigated that uh successfully and they want to keep that up all right Micah Rasmussen thank you for all that insight