The last time you may have checked in on New Jersey’s race for U.S. Senate, the state’s political universe was exploding.

That was in the spring, when First Lady Tammy Murphy abruptly dropped out of a surprisingly fierce Democratic primary fight against upstart U.S. Rep. Andy Kim to replace the disgraced Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez — after she was backed by powerful party leaders, including her husband, the governor. The drama got even more epic when Kim won a mamouth legal battle that took away the power party bosses long had over where names appear on the state’s primary ballots.

It was an opera out on the Turnpike, as Mr. Springsteen might say. Political theater of the highest order.

But the story doesn‘t end there. The next chapter is its own interesting tale, filled with twists and turns and captivating characters. It’s a one-of-a-kind general election to decide who takes over Menendez’s former seat, with big implications for New Jersey and the nation in this huge election season.

On one side is hotel developer Curtis Bashaw, 64, a Republican like few others in this age of Donald Trump: an openly gay man who describes himself as a pro-choice, pro-business moderate and doesn‘t particularly like his party’s brand of smash-mouth politics. The first-time candidate is a new take on the kind of centrist Republican that once found success in blue New Jersey.

On the other side is Kim, 42, the bookish three-term congressman who shockingly took a pickaxe to the political machines that have ruled the state. He‘s the Democratic nominee even as those bosses he defrocked remain angry at him. Gov Phil Murphy still hasn‘t endorsed him, and Kim doesn‘t seem to want it. He’s a progressive darling vowing to bring empathy back to our sharply divided political climate.

Both Bashaw and Kim are promising change — and a return to (relatively) cordial politics — as they try to erase the stain left by Menendez, the man who held the seat for three terms before being convicted of federal corruption charges and resigning this summer. You know, the charges that included Menendez taking gold bars as bribes.

Whoever becomes New Jersey’s new senator will make history. Kim would be the first Korean American from any state to serve in the Senate. Bashaw would be both the first openly gay member of New Jersey’s congressional delegation and the first openly gay Republican from anywhere in the Senate. Either would be the first U.S. senator from South Jersey since the mid-1950s.

And while many expect Kim to score the latest Democratic victory in a state that hasn’t elected a Republican to the Senate in 52 years (you read that right), Republicans truly believe they have a good chance to end their losing streak and help tip the upper house of Congress back to their party. Even some Democrats privately believe the election might be closer than anticipated. The polling so far suggests that for all the hubbub of the primary, the showdown has flown relatively under the radar.

“There’s a lot we simply don’t know about this race,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute.

The hotelier turned candidate

Bashaw’s family has a random, notable chapter in Jersey history. His grandfather, Carl McIntire, was a famed right-wing preacher who hosted a radio show decades ago, in the days before Rush Limbaugh and Fox News reigned over the conservative airwaves. At one point, McIntire had his license taken away by the FCC, so he rented a boat to broadcast from international waters off the coast of Cape May.

Bashaw — pronounced “Baa-shaw” — was 13 at the time and remembers riding on the ship with his grandfather.

“He taught us the importance of our fundamental freedoms,” Bashaw recalled in a recent interview with The Star-Ledger. “Speech, worship, assembly, conscience, enterprise came with a price in our country and have to be shared with neighbors who we might not agree with.”

He also remembers being a teenager when McIntire held a public debate with a gay minister.

“I knew by then I might be gay,” Bashaw said, adding that he remembered thinking: “Was I gonna go to hell?”

He eventually came out to his grandfather.

“He wrote me a long letter,” Bashaw remembered. “Why he didn’t think it was God’s plan. He said this is something you have to work out with the lord, and I love you.”

Later, Bashaw said, he had a jarring revelation when he witnessed gay activists throwing stink bombs into the family church.

“I think that’s part of what makes me a moderate person who wants to bring people together,” he said.

Today, Bashaw lives with his husband and business parter, Will Riccio, a restauranteur and chocolatier, in Cape May. Bashaw is the founder and managing partner of Cape Resorts, a hotel and hospitality company that restores classic resort properties in New Jersey and New York. He’s best known for renovating historic Congress Hall in Cape May, a palatial hotel that his grandfather once owned.

A graduate of Faith Christian High School in Collingswood, Bashaw later got a degree from the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania — Trump’s alma mater.

In an election where the economy looms large, Bashaw has zeroed in on how he’s a businessman who runs a company with a budget and 1,000 employees. He often says the government “can’t spend our way to prosperity.” And yes, he highlights how he’s a political newcomer and non-traditional Republican running in a world where anti-establishment anger is palpable.

“I’m not a politician,” the lanky Bashaw recently told would-be voters as he walked from tailgate party to tailgate party outside SHI Stadium in Piscataway, a massive Ferris wheel towering above, just before Rutgers took on Wisconsin in football.

He does have some government experience. Bashaw was appointed executive director of the state’s Casino Reinvestment Development Authority in the 2000s by Democratic Gov. Jim McGreevey. He also helped advise McGreevey as the governor prepared to announce in 2004 that he is “a gay American” who had conducted an adulterous affair with a male aide he put on the state payroll as a Homeland Security adviser.

Bashaw fought to curb lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Murphy appointed him to the committee that helped guide reopening businesses in New Jersey.

To win as a Republican in New Jersey, you need to carry not only the party’s base but unaffiliated voters and independent-leaning Democrats. Thus, the Republicans who have been elected governor in the last 40 years — Tom Kean, Christie Whitman, Chris Christie — all ran as moderates.

Mike DuHaime, a longtime Republican strategist and Christie adviser who is now consulting on Bashaw’s campaign, believes Bashaw is made of the same ilk because he’s “not someone you can put into any political box.”

Peter McDonough, Whitman’s former press secretary, agrees, saying Bashaw reflects “the kind of values and political positions that are winnable.”

The big issue, though: Trump is at the top of the ticket.

”New Jersey’s got a real history of ticket-splitting,” McDonough said. “But it doesn’t help being that close on the ballot to a presidential candidate so wildly out of step with mainstream New Jersey.”

Bashaw clearly wasn‘t Trump’s favorite Republican candidate. In the midst of the primary, Trump visited Wildwood — right next to Bashaw’s hometown — and endorsed his opponent, Mendham Borough Mayor Christine Serrano Glassner, an unabashed supporter of the ex-president. Bashaw was in the audience.

But during the primary, Bashaw said he will vote for Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris. He has explained that everyone “has to make a decision between two flawed candidates” and “I don’t want four more years of the same.”

He promises that, if elected, he would “stand up” to his party on issues he disagrees with. He said he doesn’t “think one person can upend our democracy on fiat” and that “name-calling didn’t start with Trump,” though he has “taken it to an unacceptable level.”

Kim isn’t buying it. During their first debate, the congressman noted Trump appointed three justices to a U.S. Supreme Court that took “the most extremist turns” and he’s “worried about Mr. Bashaw’s ability to make decisions about Supreme Court justices, as we’ve seen him make a decision about who should be the next president.”

He added Bashaw’s election could help strip away Democrats’ control of the Senate, making it possible for “dangerous policies” to continue even if Harris defeats Trump.

Critics also note Bashaw would caucus with a Republican Party that has introduced anti-LGBTQ+ policies. Garden State Equality even endorsed Kim over Bashaw, saying while his election would be historic, his positions “do not meet our criteria for being a true pro-equality candidate.”

Bashaw’s campaign called that “absurd.”

“It’s harder coming out as a Republican than it was coming out as gay in the climate we’re in,” Bashaw said. “People are so used to having check lists.”

Back at the Rutgers tailgate, Danielle Gallo of Long Valley was impressed with Bashaw’s introduction.

“Anyone who’s a non-establishment candidate is someone I’m willing to vote for,” she said.

One table over, there was a different reaction.

“Politicians are all corrupt. Best of luck to you,” one man told Bashaw.

“I’m not a politician,” Bashaw countered.

“We don’t want anyone associated with Menendez,” another man said.

“Maybe they got me confused,” Bashaw reasoned.

“It’s a change year,” he added. “People are exhausted.”

The rogue congressman

Before all of this, Kim cut a profile as a mild-mannered former diplomat who flipped the state’s 3rd congressional district — a wide swath of the central and south Jersey — during the blue wave of 2018.

The son of Korean immigrants, Kim is a graduate of Cherry Hill High School East who became a Rhodes Scholar at the same time as Pete Buttigieg and later worked in the U.S. State Department and as a national security adviser in President Barack Obama’s administration.

As a congressman, Kim was re-elected twice, even though Trump carried the area in both of his previous White House runs. But Kim might have been best known for cleaning up the U.S. Capitol after the Jan. 6 riot, an image that went viral.

That was until Menendez was indicted 13 months ago. Kim entered the race the next day.

A few months later, Tammy Murphy jumped in and the political machine churned out its support. For as long as anyone can remember, candidates who aren‘t favored by the Democratic party bosses usually don’t win. But Kim stayed in and was backed by an uprising of progressive supporters who accused the first lady of being bolstered by nepotism.

All hell broke loose, and soon Tammy Murphy stunned almost everyone by dropping out, saying she didn’t want to wage “a very divisive and negative campaign” against a fellow Democrat in a critical election year. Then came Kim’s successful lawsuit that suspended the “county line,” the controversial, decades-old system that has empowered party leaders by giving their preferred candidates special placement on primary ballots. xxx

Kim, who ultimately trounced two other opponents in the primary, has continued to paint himself as a reformer. His first TV ad of the general election might seem familiar: He’s shown driving around the state while what sounds like the song “Woke Up This Morning” plays in the background. All of it is a nod to TV’s most Jersey show, “The Sopranos.” On top of it, Kim declares it’s time to fix the state’s reputation for corruption.

“New Jersey families deserve public servants who will fight for them,” he says.

At one point, a shot of Drumthwacket, the governor’s mansion in Princeton, flashes on the screen — which some speculated might be a sly shot at the Murphys. Kim insisted it wasn’t intentional.

Kim maintains a friendly if not chilled relationship with top state Democrats. Sources told NJ Advance Media that some county leaders remain bitter, believing he took down their ballot power for his own gain. But they won’t fight against him with the Senate up for grabs. Kim is also running a coordinated campaign with the state party.

“In the end, we want to win,” one party insider said. “We’ll suck it up like everybody else sucks it up.”

Then there’s Murphy’s lack of an endorsement. Asked about it during a recent radio interview, the governor joked “there’s no secret he wasn’t my first choice.” But Murphy insisted he will vote for Kim because control of the Senate is “too important to screw around.” He noted Kim has not actively sought endorsements and that he would give him one if asked.

Murphy has praised Kim’s opponent a few times as well.

“He’s gonna win,” Murphy said of Kim. “They’re both good guys. I’ve known Curtis a lot longer.”

Kim dismisses any drama, saying he isn’t seeking endorsements because he’s “building this up from the people. We’re not running a conventional campaign.”

Recently, Kim took his campaign to the Twin City Supermarket in Elizabeth, a heavily Spanish-speaking city in North Jersey, about an hour from his Moorestown home. There, he met with workers in the loading area, noting that not only are his parents immigrants but so is his wife: Kammy Lai, a tax attorney from Canada. The couple has two boys, 7 and 9.

“I know right now there’s a lot of challenges with high costs in New Jersey and different challenges to be able to provide for families,” Kim, dressed in a dark blue suit, told the employees. “And I want to be someone who can really help try to solve these problems for you.”

He also told them he’s running to “build a different kind of politics” so his kids won’t “grow up in a divided nation.”

Charles Hall Jr., president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union Local 108, chimed in: “He’s a good man.”

Conventional wisdom is that Democrats might be wounded by Menendez’s fall, giving voters a reason to turn the Senate seat red. Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University, notes New Jersey’s politics have been “overdue for a cleaning.”

But Baker said Kim “seems to be the perfect instrument to do it.”

“If Andy Kim weren’t the anti-Menendez, I don’t know who would be,” he said.

Dan Cassino, a pollster at Fairleigh Dickinson University, said the race “would have been closer” had Tammy Murphy been the Democratic nominee.

“Because progressive voters were mad at her for being tied to machines,” Cassino said.

To that end, Bashaw has repeatedly portrayed himself as an outsider businessman while labeling Kim as a “D.C. insider” who has voted in near-lockstep with President Joe Biden.

Kim has said he finds that “offensive.”

“I have worked in war zones,” he scolded Bashaw during their last debate. “You’re trying to serve in the Senate. Have some respect for public servants.”

Bashaw noted as a business owner, he, too, is a public servant.

“Any confusion there, I apologize for,” he said. “I believe all of us are citizens and have to be in service to our country.”

The issues, the polls, the money

While both Bashaw and Kim are trying to lure voters in moderate New Jersey, they do clash on several big issues.

On abortion, Bashaw has said he would support bipartisan legislation to “codify” a woman’s right to choose across all 50 states.

But Bashaw has not specifically said what reproductive rights such a bill should allow. He has also said he supports the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, arguing he believes it was correct for the issue to return to the states.

“I believe it will come back to the federal government, and I would be an advocate for a common-sense bill to protect a woman’s right to choose,” Bashaw said.

Kim believes Bashaw’s stance on Dobbs makes his proclamation on abortion disingenuous.

“I fundamentally have a problem with you saying you are pro-choice,” Kim told him during their first debate.

Bashaw has made immigration a key part of his platform, saying the U.S. needs to close its southern border, though he does not believe in mass deportation and says Congress needs to have “a compassionate conversation about a path to citizenship.”

Kim said the U.S. needs an “orderly” immigration system and to increase its number of immigration judges.

On the Israel-Gaza war, Bashaw sides with Israel, saying the country has a right not only to defend itself but win. Kim said officials should push for “a regional coalition,” noting there is “not a military-only solution.”

Both Kim and Bashaw want to restore the SALT deduction that was part of Trump‘s tax cuts and hit particularly hard in New Jersey, which has the nation’s highest property taxes.

There hasn’t been much polling in the race. A recent Stockton University survey found Kim has better favorability ratings (27%) than Bashaw (9%). Meanwhile, 55% of the state’s voters are unfamiliar with or unsure about Kim and 81% are in the same boat about Bashaw.

Some New Jersey Democrats fear this race will see a single-digit margin, even as the Cook Political Report calls it a “solid Democrat victory” in a state where registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by nearly 1 million.

Bashaw has raised nearly $4 million, with just over $2 million coming from his own pocket. He has had little help from national Republicans, other than $35,000 from the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Kim has raised more than $10 million.

The last Republican to run for this Senate seat, Bob Hugin, spent $36 million and still lost to Menendez in 2018 by about 11 points — even after Menendez was indicted (though cleared) the first time.

This time, Menendez filed to run as an independent even after his indictment, a scenario that had some Democrats worried he would siphon some support away in favor of Republicans. But he ended his bid shortly after his conviction. That gives Democrats “one less thing to worry about,” said Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling.

Ben Dworkin, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship at Rowan University, said Republicans lost another boost when Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee, which put the dynamics of the Senate race “back to normal.”

A necktie and a moment of unity

In a race short on vitriol, one moment in particular stood out.

Mike Crispi, a right-wing podcaster and Trump delegate, accused Kim on social media of wearing the North Korean flag on his tie during the second debate.

“What is he trying to tell us — Where do his allegiances lie?” asked Crispi, whose harsh stances were examined in an NJ Advance Media report on extreme politics in New Jersey.

There was no North Korean flag on Kim’s tie. It was blue with a set of white and red stripes. The North Korean flag has a star in the middle.

Kim denounced the accusation as a “disgusting attack” and Crispi doubled down in a video, saying the tie “didn’t resemble the United States of America.”

It went to another level when Derek Guy, a menswear influencer, took notice and wrote on social media that “ironically, Mike Crispi is the one wearing a foreign tie,” noting it was related to British history and culture.

Across the country, candidates have faced slams like this and their opponents have either joined in or allowed them to stand by simply ignoring them. But not in this unique Senate contest.

Calling Kim a “good man and patriotic American” despite disagreeing with him on policy, Bashaw condemned Crispi’s attack.

“As someone who has been stereotyped and on the wrong end of hateful incorrect assumptions my entire life,” Bashaw said, “I wholeheartedly denounce baseless accusations based solely on someone’s background or appearance.”

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