Has any Senate election had a stranger preamble than the one in New Jersey? It all started when three-term incumbent Bob Menendez was indicted last fall on federal corruption charges and for conspiracy to act as a foreign agent for the government of Egypt, allegations that prompted Congressman Andy Kim and New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy to jump in the Democratic Party to unseat Menendez. That prompted Menendez to drop out of the primary in March, and an ugly battle between Kim and Murphy for county line endorsements ensued. I won’t rehash the entirety of the pre-primary endorsement fight, but the nutshell version is that the race between Kim and Murphy quickly became a proxy battle between the old, boss and machine-controlled style of New Jersey politics that stood to benefit Murphy and a quasi-populist, anti-corruption focused vision championed by Kim. Kim would ultimately win out, not only by virtue of Murphy dropping out of the race, but because a federal judge ruled that the controversial county line practice (in which a county party’s endorsee received preferential ballot placement) was unconstitutional. In June, Menendez reentered the race as an independent, but dropped out and resigned a little over a month later after a jury found him guilty on all charges.

Though the race settled into a traditional Democrat versus Republican race since Menedez’s withdrawal, the chaotic precursors to the election have still left scars. Apparently still smarting from Kim’s campaign against his wife, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy first  declined to appoint Kim to Menendez’s now open seat after he resigned, opting instead to elevate his former chief of staff George Helmy as a caretaker; and still has yet to endorse his fellow Democrat, even going as far as to say that the race features “two very good candidates” running, the kind of intraparty spat that has become increasingly rare in a fairly unified Democratic Party.

Speaking of that second candidate – New Jersey hasn’t elected a Republican to the Senate since 1972, but if you were concocting one in a lab to break that streak, you could certainly do much worse than Curtis Bashaw. A pro-choice, openly gay real estate developer with a focus on fiscal conservatism, Bashaw cuts the moderate, white collar figure that could appeal to voters in Trump-Biden counties like Morris who were turned off by the former president’s populist rhetoric and appeals to social conservatives. If Bashaw is going to win, it’ll take appealing to those New York and Philadelphia suburbs in the same way Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciatterelli did in 2021 when he nearly unseated Murphy. A tall task, to be sure, but one that concerns about left-wing antisemitism (New Jersey is the second most Jewish state in the nation after New York), frustration with Biden’s refugee policy (the New York media market, which comprises of roughly half of New Jersey, has been inundated with stories about refugees overwhelming New York City services), and Democrats’ inability to raise the SALT cap (a dubious priority for suburban New Jersey Democrats like Josh Gottheimer and Mikie Sherrill) could make it a little easier.

Bashaw may also benefit from the opportunity to paint his opponent as a Washington elite and himself as a more committed son of New Jersey. Kim has a compelling narrative – the son of Korean immigrants, he rose up the ranks of the State Department, serving in Afghanistan as an advisor to Generals David Petraeus and John Allen before joining the National Security Council and directly advising Barack Obama on Iraq. An impressive resume, but one that may keep him from connecting with voters in the same way as Bashaw, who has been building resorts on the Shore since the 80s and served as executive director of the state’s Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (in other words, he decided how all the tax dollars generated by Atlantic City’s casinos got spent). 

Regardless of who wins in November, history will be made – no, not just because New Jersey will elect either its first openly gay or Asian American senator, but because Kim or Bashaw would be the first resident of South Jersey to serve in the upper chamber since Princeton’s H. Alexander Smith left office in 1959. Could the fact that Kim doesn’t have as high a profile in the state’s larger, more Democratic leaning northern counties depress turnout enough to pull Bashaw out of the line? It’s doubtful, but either way, expect a smaller victory than Cory Booker’s nearly 17 point romp in 2020. This has been a weird year for New Jersey politics, and it might get weirder still.