As a New York City-based publication, Commonweal has often featured contributors with ties to local institutions and regional politics — including veteran reporter, author, and professor Paul Moses, who has spent decades reporting on politics in New York and New Jersey. 

On the basis of this reporting—and a Commonweal piece about the conviction and political origins of disgraced former New Jersey senator Bob Menendez—Moses was invited to join “Deadline NYC,” a radio program hosted on WBAI by reporter Tom Robbins. Moses and Robbins held a wide-ranging, hour-long discussion on Mendendez’s political career and early years as a political acolyte of Union City mayor Bill Musto—which Moses argued were critical to understanding Menendez’s trajectory as a politician. As he argued in the pages of Commonweal and on WBAI, Menendez “absorbed it all: Musto’s hardball patronage politics, his expertise in the mechanics of governance, his pleasure in helping supplicants, his merciless treatment of political foes.” Moses explained that Menendez became a mirror image of Musto — and a quintessential image of New Jersey’s local politics in the late twentieth century.

Beyond discussing Moses’s piece, “Old Bonds and Gold Bars,” the two also talked about Commonweal as an institution. “It’s kind of a gem,” Moses explained. “It features reasoned conversation that looks at the world through the Catholic lens of social justice [...] and the common good.” Robbins, for his part, was impressed by Commonweal’s history and by the cast of characters who have appeared in the publication’s pages over the years, especially legendary New York figures like Dorothy Day. 

The full program, which aired on February 24, can be found here.