Curtis Bashaw, a Trump-supporting hotelier in Cape May, wants “Menendez’s seat” in the U.S. Senate race

SUMMIT, New Jersey — Curtis Bashaw is out of his element.

The Congress Hall hotelier from Cape May is on the other side of New Jersey, at the Summit commuter rail station in North Jersey on Tuesday morning, 42 days from Election Day.

After driving 71,000 miles in his Suburban during the U.S. Senate campaign, the Republican developer and aspiring politician became familiar with the ins and outs of New Jersey retail politics.

He faces the boosted metabolism campaign of Democratic favorite, U.S. Rep. Andy Kim of Moorestown, in a race with unexpected South Jersey tinges between two men who attended Cherry Hill East, though decades apart, and Bashaw , who attended the ninth grade.

Both say New Jersey can do more than a man who held the job for 18 years: former Sen. Bob Menendez, a Democrat convicted of 16 counts in a federal political corruption case who Both you still seem to be against it in their campaigns.

Accustomed to greeting guests on his elegant hotel porch, Bashaw, 64, steps into people’s hectic morning routines, trying to get ahead of voters, especially Democrats and independents, by putting on his best performance on the (train) platform.

“I’m a businessman from Cape May, I run hotels and restaurants, I employ a thousand people, I’m a fiscal conservative, a social moderate, not a politician running for Bob Menendez’s seat,” he told commuters.

“Definitely better than Menendez,” replied PJ Sala, a 50-year-old Democrat voting for vice president Kamala Harris in the presidential race.

Bashaw, who is married, gay and a moderate supporter of abortion rights but voted for former President Donald Trump, described his campaign as “walking on a balance beam.”

The developer is the grandson of the company renowned fundamentalist radio preacher Carl McIntire, and counts previously New Jersey Democratic Gov. Jim McGreevey as a friend after personally helping McGreevey navigate his extremely public coming out journey.

He is trying to find wedge issues to gain traction against Kim in a state that hasn’t elected a single Republican senator since 1952.

Is it Israel (he is a staunch supporter)? The fact that he is a Republican who supports abortion rights and LGBTQ rights? Immigration and the border? Economy?

Do New Jersey voters want to split their vote?

“I think the acrimony in our politics is because people want the air out of it,” Bashaw said a few days before the train stop visit, sitting in one of the wicker chairs on the Great Lawn behind his convention hall. “They are exhausted. I am running a hopeful campaign. I want to talk about problems. Apparently Andy Kim is a nice guy and I’m a nice guy too, so I hope that’s not an option.

For his part, Kim, 42, toppled the entire political machine along the way, New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy and a long-established political process – the so-called line that favors party-endorsed candidates in primaries. Gov. Phil Murphy has said he is voting for Democrats, but he has not explicitly endorsed Kim, nor has Kim explicitly asked for that endorsement.

Bashaw believes he has resolved one important issue with his stance on abortion. He announced that he would vote against any national ban on abortion and in favor of a national law guaranteeing abortion rights. He also advocates background checks for gun buyers.

“It’s hard for Andy Kim to accept that I’m pro-choice,” he said.

The Republican SuperPAC, United 2024, released a Bashaw ad this week calling Kim a “DC challenger” and Bashaw a “different kind of Republican” and showing him at home with husband Will Riccio, owner of Louisa’s in Cape May and co-owner of Bashaw of Beach Plum Farms .

“I would not regulate a woman’s right to decide about her body and reproductive health. A bipartisan bill would simply solve this issue.”

Andy Kim doesn’t buy it.

Kim painted Bashaw as the multi-millionaire who can finances the campaign independently without any significant public service. He asked how Bashaw can advocate for abortion rights and yet support the U.S. Supreme Court’s law Dobbs a decision that invalidated federal abortion rights and sparked bans in some red states.

“I find it disingenuous and deceptive of Mr. Bashaw to keep saying this” while supporting Dobbs decision,” Kim said. “It is not inherently a pro-choice position.”

Regarding Israel, Kim said: “I would never treat Israel as a political tool and a weapon of partisanship. These are very serious matters where human lives are at stake. I pressed on to make sure the hostages were released.

They both have agreed to three debates, first at 8 p.m. October 6 at Rider University, which will be broadcast live.

“I will vote for Donald Trump”

In the famous yellow brick Congress Hall, hotel guests sip mimosas and eat eggs Benedict on the porch, Bashaw balances the cool atmosphere of the Congress Hall with the hectic political schedule.

“I’m going to vote for Donald Trump,” he said. He won’t say whether his husband plans to do the same.

It comes with the gravitas of a historic hotel purchased by his grandfather in 1968, which Bashaw saved from bankruptcy in 1995 and helped redefine Cape May into a sophisticated Jersey Shore destination.

Still, he’d like to keep some distance between what a vote for Donald Trump means – and a darkly fantastic image of America currently being traded by Trump – and what a vote for Bashaw means.

He said he wants to secure the border but rejects Trump and Vance’s inflammatory depictions of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. It says one-third of its 1,000-person workforce are first- or second-generation immigrants to the United States. Joe Biden was fairly elected, and January 6 was a “terrible day.”

Of J.D. Vance’s statement about the relative value of childless women, Bashaw stated, “I think it’s a statement based on ignorance.”

“J.D. Vance was chosen by Donald Trump as his running mate,” he said. “I’m running a race in New Jersey. Shouldn’t I run away because they’re there? I’m running as Curtis Bashaw against Andy Kim.”

“This is not God’s way”

Bashaw grew up in Haddonfield and ended up in Cape May because his grandfather, Carl McIntire, a fierce fundamentalist preacher from Collingswood, bought properties after the 1962 storm, including the convention hall and the former Admiral Hotel, which he renamed the Christian Admiral. Bashaw spent his summers working as a busboy and bellhop.

McIntire, a staunch anti-communist, eventually lost his FCC license to broadcast his programs The Hour of the Reformation of the 20th centuryand instead transmitted a signal off the coast of Cape May, in international waters, from a ship he called Radio Free America.

His grandfather’s legacy would seem complicated to Bashaw, but he doesn’t present it that way.

“He debated a gay minister in 1976,” Bashaw said. “He told me, ‘Son, I don’t think this is God’s way, but you have to work it out with God.'”

“When I was 20, I went to Philadelphia, to New York, and there was a lot of political activism there,” Bashaw said. “I realized that in every support group there are those who become quite intolerant and judgmental, whether they are on the left or the right.”

“Sort of Sayreville”

This is Bashaw’s indirect approach to the campaign theme. (Kim responds that he won in a district Trump won twice. “I live in the spirit of bipartisanship,” Kim said. “I’m not just talking about it like Mr. Bashaw.”)

During the primary, South Jersey Republicans gasped with pride that Bashaw had defeated a Trump-backed candidate from North Jersey, even though many of them, like state Sen. Michael Testa, Bashaw’s campaign chairman, were Trump enthusiasts. Testa was Trump’s co-chair in New Jersey in 2020.

Testa came into contact with Bashaw during the Covid-19 pandemic, when Shore Tourism and other officials opposed what they saw as the governor’s draconian lockdown measures. In 2020, Bashaw was appointed by Murphy to a tourism sector task force to help restart the state’s economy. “I felt useful,” Bashaw said.

Bashaw said his experience renovating Convention Hall and two years as executive director of the Casino Reinvestment Authority (a position he was also appointed to by the Democratic governor) would serve him well in Washington, as both required navigating the quagmire of New Regulations and Jersey politics.

“I’m a businessman who has signed the first part of his paycheck every two weeks for 35 years,” he said. “Andy Kim only got a government salary.” (Kim was a State Department foreign affairs adviser before becoming a congressman and also spent time in Afghanistan.)

Bashaw said state retail policy has taught him that people want to be in the middle.

“You meet people at these fairs. Some are Democrats, some are Republicans, but in the unthreatening zone of their community, they are all from Sayreville in some way. They are faithful to Sayreville. Their children play on the soccer team together.