EXCLUSIVE – It’s been over a half century since a Republican won a Senate election in blue state New Jersey.

But real estate developer and hotelier Curtis Bashaw is optimistic about his party’s prospects in November’s elections to end the decades-long losing streak.

Bashaw, one of the two leading contenders in a multi-candidate field in June’s GOP Senate primary in New Jersey, emphasized “I believe this is a once in a generation opportunity.”

“I can’t wait to see how we prove to the rest of the country that New Jersey is a lot more purple than people realize,” he added in a national digital exclusive interview with Fox News.

THIS POPULAR FORMER GOP GOVERNOR AIMS TO FLIP A SENATE SEAT IN HIS DEEP BLUE STATE

A major reason for Bashaw’s optimism is the prospect of a three-way race in New Jersey. Longtime Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, who was indicted last year on federal corruption charges, is not running for re-election as a Democrat and instead is mulling an independent bid, which polls indicate would potentially take votes away from likely Democratic Senate nominee Rep. Andy Kim.

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Bashaw, an entrepreneur and historic preservationist who is recognized in the Garden State for leading the restorations of the historic Congress Hall and the Virginia Hotel in Cape May, at the southern tip of the Jersey shore, is a first time politician.

“I’m a political outsider,” Bashaw emphasized. “I’m a business guy. I built a business over 35 years restoring landmark abandoned hotels.”

And he highlighted that he grew his business from 25 to 1,000 employees.

“I’m in it because I want to unshackle small business from over regulation,” he said.

File photo of New Jersey Democrat Rep. Andy Kim, at the U.S. Capitol. (Fox News Digital/ Jon Michael Raasch)

Bashaw’s chief rival for the GOP nomination is Christine Serrano Glassner, who’s served for four years as mayor of Mendham Borough, in the northern part of the state.

Bashaw holds a formidable fundraising advantage in the Republican race – thanks in part to a large self-investment in his campaign. 

He also enjoys an advantage on the primary ballot, as he has the county line in two-thirds of the state’s 21 counties. 

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New Jersey has long allowed counties to print ballots that include a prominent party line, which are widely viewed as helping candidates with establishment backing. Kim sued in federal court to overturn the county lines in the Democratic Primary. But the GOP county lines were upheld.

“New Jersey is made up of thousands and thousands and thousands of small businesspeople.  We are going to get to them really quickly and our name ID will go up really fast,” Bashaw said.

And pointing to a busy schedule on the campaign trail ahead of the primary, Bashaw showcased that “I go to six coffees a day. I go talk to every single county in our state. I put a lot of miles on the car.”

Former President Donald Trump greets attendees during a campaign event in Schnecksville, Pa., Saturday, April 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Joe Lamberti) (AP Photo/Joe Lamberti)

Asked about former President Donald Trump, who is the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee, Bashaw told Fox News “I’m supporting this ticket top to bottom.”

It’s been 36 years since a Republican carried New Jersey in a White House race, but Trump is planning a campaign stop in the state next month.

“Donald Trump thinks New Jersey’s in play. I agree with him. Trump believes he can flip the country from blue to red. I believe we can flip this Senate seat from blue to red,” Bashaw said.

He argued that “there’s a massive opportunity to pull” New Jersey’s large pool of unaffiliated voters “to the Republican tent…. We are going to pull those unaffiliated voters our way this fall.”

National Republicans to date have not made any investments in the Senate race in the Garden State.

But National Republican Senatorial Committee communications director Mike Berg said “we’re keeping a close eye on New Jersey.”

A national Democratic Senate campaign aide, asked about the contest, told Fox News that “Democrats have won every New Jersey Senate race since 1978 and 2024 will be no different.”

Real estate developer and hotelier Curtis Bashaw, a Republican candidate for Senate in New Jersey, stands in front of the historic Congress Hall hotel in Ridgewood, N.J. on April 17, 2024 (Curtis Bashaw campaign)

Bashaw, in his interview, spotlighted a couple of key issues, including crime.

“New Jerseyans are not feeling safe and secure in their homes,” he argued.

On immigration and border security, another key issue Republicans are spotlighting, he charged that New Jersey “is now a border state. There are illegals coming into all of our counties.”

“The woke ideology has permeated through our culture and we now have in our state, schools keeping secrets from parents about very, very, personal decisions,” he claimed, as he defended parental rights in public education.

On the issue of abortion, which Democrats are spotlighting, Bashaw pointed to the two-year-old blockbuster decision by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority that overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, which for a half century had legalized abortion nationwide.

“I believe that the Dobbs decision was the correct decision,” Bashaw said. 

But he added that “I don’t support a federal ban,” which some in his party are backing.

The Dobbs decision moved the fight over abortion back to the states, and in New Jersey abortion is legal in all stages of pregnancy.

“New Jersey’s decided it,” Bashaw said, before charging that “the Democrats are the extremists on this issue, passing legislation allowing abortions up until the day of birth.”

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

NPR has suspended a veteran editor who wrote an essay criticizing the public broadcaster for having what he described as a lack of politically diverse viewpoints.

Uri Berliner, an award-winning business journalist who has worked at the network for 25 years, will be off the job for five days without pay. Berliner acknowledged the suspension Monday in an interview with National Public Radio. He did not respond to The Times’ request for comment.

The suspension came after Berliner put a harsh spotlight on NPR with an April 9 opinion piece for the Substack newsletter the Free Press. He said the decline in NPR’s audience levels is due to a move toward liberal political advocacy and catering to “a distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.” The overall thrust of the piece asserted that NPR has “lost America’s trust.”

An NPR representative said the network “does not comment on individual personnel matters, including discipline. We expect all of our employees to comply with NPR policies and procedures, which for our editorial staff includes the NPR Ethics Handbook.”

Berliner was told by management last week that he violated company policy by failing to secure its approval to supply work for other news outlets, according to an NPR news report by media correspondent David Folkenflik. Berliner was informed that he will be fired if he violates that policy again.

Berliner’s essay has been seized on by right-wing media outlets that frequently accuse NPR and other mainstream news sources of a liberal bias.

On Monday, conservative activists resurfaced years old social media posts by current NPR Chief Executive Katherine Maher, in which she expressed her disdain for former President Trump. In one 2020 post, she called Trump a racist.

Maher took on her NPR role in January. She previously headed the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, and has no previous experience in journalism. NPR has said Maher was not in an editorial role at the foundation when she made the social media posts, adding that she “is entitled to free speech as a private citizen.”

Berliner’s essay said the network began to lose its way after Trump’s 2016 election victory.

“I eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him fairly,” Berliner wrote. “But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency.”

Berliner said the network overplayed the investigation of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign in the 2016 presidential election. He also said the news operation turned a blind eye to the story of the laptop abandoned by President Biden’s son Hunter in October 2020, out of concern that coverage of the matter would help reelect Trump.

Berliner was also critical of NPR’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war and the origins of the COVID-19 virus, as well as the organization’s focus on race and identity, which he said “became paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace.”

Edith Chapin, NPR’s chief news executive, rejected Berliner’s analysis in a memo to staff after his piece was published.

“We’re proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories,” she wrote. “We believe that inclusion — among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage — is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James is pushing the judge in former President Donald Trump’s civil fraud case to void the $175 million bond that Trump previously posted to appeal his New York civil lawsuit.

In her 26-page filing obtained by Fox News Digital, James questions whether the insurance company has sufficient funds to back it up.

Trump’s bond was posted by California-based Knight Specialty Insurance Company (KSIC), but James argued that the insurer was “not authorized” to write business in New York, stating it is a small insurer that is not authorized to write business in New York and is not regulated by the state’s insurance department, had never before written a surety bond in New York or in the prior two years in any other jurisdiction, and has a total policyholder surplus of just $138 million.

The company has a total policyholder surplus of just $138 million, the filing states. According to New York state law, smaller businesses like KSIC are not permitted to expose themselves to liabilities, like a bond, or any potential loss greater than 10 percent of their surplus.

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“Based on KSIC’s policyholder surplus in its most recent annual financial statement of $138,441,671, the limitation of loss on any one risk that KSIC is permitted to write is $13.8 million,” the lawyers wrote. “The face amount of the bond exceeds this limitation by $161.2 million.”

James also wrote in the filing that “KSIC is not qualified to act as the surety under this standard because its management has been found by federal authorities to have operated affiliated companies within KSIC’s holding company structure in violation of federal law on multiple occasions within the past several years.”

“KSIC does not now have an exclusive right to control the account and will not obtain such control unless and until it exercises a right to do so on two days’ notice,” the filing read.

James also wrote that the Court should not rely on KSIC’s financial summary attached to the bond as evidence that KSIC has sufficient capacity to justify writing a $175 million bond.

“That is because KSIC sends 100% of its retained insurance risk to affiliates in the Cayman Islands, where lax regulations allow KSIC to use this risk transfer to reduce the liabilities it carries on its books in a way that artificially bolsters its surplus, a practice New York regulators have dubbed “shadow insurance” and about which they have sounded the alarm,” the filing read. 

For these reasons, James writes that the Court should deny the Motion and require Defendants to post a replacement undertaking within seven days of the Court’s ruling.

NY AG LETITIA JAMES BOOED AT FDNY CEREMONY WITH CHANTS OF ‘TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP!’

Democrat New York Attorney General Letitia James and former President Donald Trump. (Getty Images)

In September, Judge Arthur Engoron ruled that Trump and the Trump Organization had committed fraud while building a real estate empire by deceiving banks, insurers and others by overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing financing.

The judge also prohibited Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or legal entity in New York for two years. 

The former president has repeatedly slammed the case against him and denied any wrongdoing, calling it a “witch hunt.” 

James brought the lawsuit against Trump, accusing Trump and the Trump Organization of fraudulent business practices. James claimed Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric, as well as his associates and businesses, committed “numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentation” on their financial statements.

Trump has pleaded not guilty on all counts. 

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The judge is expected to hold a hearing Monday to discuss the issues raised by the attorney general’s office. The hearing is set to run in conjunction with opening statements in Trump’s New York criminal trial.

Fox News’ Brooke Singman and Timothy Nerozzi contributed to this report.