Race to watch: New Jersey’s U.S. Senate contest between Democrat Andy Kim and Republican Curtis Bashaw

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In New Jersey, six candidates are vying for the Senate seat vacated by former Sen. Bob Menendez, who resigned after being convicted of federal corruption charges. Democrat Andy Kim, Republican Curtis Bashaw, Green Party candidate Christina Khalil, Libertarian Kenneth Kaplan, Joanne Kuniansky of the Socialist Worker Party and Patricia Mooneyham of the Vote Better Party are all running to represent the Garden State.

According to the most recent figures available, there are roughly 2.5 million registered Democrats in the Garden State, compared to 1.6 million Republicans and approximately 2.4 million unaffiliated voters.

The last time a Republican from New Jersey was elected to the U.S. Senate was 1972, when incumbent Clifford Case defeated Democratic challenger Paul Krebs.

Democrat Andy Kim

Andy Kim grew up in Marlton in South Jersey where he attended elementary school and graduated from Cherry Hill High School East. He attended Deep Springs College in California, and received his undergraduate degree from University of Chicago. Kim was a Rhodes Scholar and earned a doctorate in international relations from Oxford University in England.

Kim worked as a civilian advisor for the U.S. Department of State in Afghanistan, and the National Security Council.

“I decided I wanted to dedicate my career and my life to national security,” he said.

He ran for Congress in the 3rd Congressional District in 2018, defeating Republican Tom MacArthur. He has represented the district ever since.

“South Jersey is our home and I feel really blessed to have a chance now, having grown here, to now represent the community where I did my whole K-12 in the public schools system, and now be raising a family here,” he said.

In Congress, Kim served on multiple committees, including the House Committee on Armed Services, the Committee on Small Business and the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Over the past year, he has served on the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, the Subcommittee on Africa, the House Committee on Armed Services, Cyber, Innovative Technologies and Information Systems and he chaired the Indo-Pacific Committee.

Last year, Kim announced he would run against incumbent New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, after Menendez was indicted for a second time on federal corruption charges.

New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy also entered the race, but dropped out in March after struggling to gain support.

Kim’s legal challenge to the “county line” ballot arrangement in New Jersey, which gave candidates backed by party bosses a favored position on the printed ballot was successful, and he swept to victory in the June Democratic primary.

Menendez, who was convicted in July, resigned a month later and canceled plans to seek re-election as an independent.

Kim said he is running for Senate to restore integrity and trust in politics and the number one issue in his campaign is affordability.

“In Congress, I worked hard to try and lower prescription drug costs, support seniors that are struggling on a fixed income, more that we’re trying to do on student loans, housing costs and food costs, those are the kind of nuts and bolts that people really want to engage on,” he said.

Kim said he worries about the future and the world his children are growing up in. “There’s just so much turbulence, so much chaos in the world right now, and I want to do my part to give them that sense of stability and security, the same stability and security and opportunity that my parents wanted for me,” he said.

He said people are concerned about what freedom means right now, and that he strongly supports women’s rights.

Kim said he wants to expand free meals for school children, create more federal contracting opportunities for veteran-owned small businesses and push for laws that lower costs for servicemembers and veterans.

Kim said he hopes people will see him not just as a candidate for the Senate but also as a father trying to build a better future for his kids.

Republican Curtis Bashaw

Curtis Bashaw, the Republican candidate, is a Camden County native, who grew up in Cherry Hill and Haddonfield. A graduate of Wheaton College and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, he is a hotelier. He purchased his first hotel with his father in 1986.

For the last 35 years, he built his business, Cape Resorts. His company includes several hotels in Cape May along with a couple of properties on Long Island, New York.

Bashaw served as the head of the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority under Gov. Jim McGreevy for two years.

“I got a taste for what it was like to work inside a political process,” he said. “I felt when I finished that two-yeartwo year term that maybe one day I would go back and get involved.”

Bashaw’s platform includes securing the southern U.S. border, which he said has been conflated with immigration policy.

“Border security shouldn’t be a partisan issue,” he said. “Immigration policy, on the other hand, we need to have a bipartisan consensus.”

His other campaign issues include cutting taxes and creating an energy plan that isn’t heavily reliant on foreign oil. Bashaw said New Jersey is losing college grads and younger professionals to other states because of the state’s affordability issues.

Bashaw is in contrast to the top of the GOP ticket. He is an openly gay man with a husband who said he is pro-choice, though he supported the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned constitutional access to abortion. But, he considers himself “a change agent.”

“I’m being a protagonist in this moment to try to do some good,” he said. “I think voters are exhausted by the dysfunction of our politics, and that’s one of the reasons I stepped into it.”

Green Party Candidate Christina Khalil

Christina Khalil was born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, and grew up in foster care. After moving to New Jersey, she graduated from Saddle Brook High School then earned a B.A. in psychology and a Master’s degree in Social Work from Ramapo College.

She worked in the co-occurring addiction and mental health field, starting as an intern and then moving to be a liaison between Drug Court and treatment.

During the COVID pandemic, she worked on the front lines at a medical detox facility while volunteering at Hackensack High School.

One major focus of her campaign is fighting inflation. Another is immigration reform. She said improving the immigration policy requires a complete redesign, including funneling money from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to investments in immigration lawyers, community support, mental health support for asylum seekers, and immediate pathways to citizenship.

Khalil also supports universal healthcare. She wants to establish a no-cost national healthcare system that provides coverage starting from birth. If elected to the Senate, she said she would work to address the housing crisis, police brutality, climate change, animal welfare, campaign finance reform, unemployment and reconfiguring the national tax system.

Khalil has volunteered for multiple community organizations, including the Bergen County LGBTQ+ Alliance.

She said the true keys to freedom lie in education.

Libertarian Kenneth Kaplan

Kenneth Kaplan was born in Newark, and grew up in West Orange. He graduated from West Orange Mountain High School. Kaplan then attended Franklin & Marshall College, earning a B.A from Brandeis University and a law degree from New York University Law School. He has worked as a real estate broker, lawyer, and is the president of KenKap Realty Corp.

A major focal point of his campaign is following the Constitution, which he believes means small government, lower taxes and more individual liberty.

On his website,he said the best way to stimulate the economy and create jobs ‘is for government to get out of the way.”

He supports eliminating federal income taxes. He said this is doable “if we strip the federal government back to the functions that the Constitution directly mandates, such as providing for the national defense and maintaining a federal court system.”

He favors a foreign policy that does not interfere with the internal affairs of other countries, encourages solar, wind, hydro and other fossil fuel alternatives and reduces the national deficit by shrinking the size of government.

He is a past president of the Livingston Lions Club, and a member of the Men’s Club of Temple Beth Shalom in Livingston, where he is a board member.