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

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.