Andy Kim and Curtis Bashaw face off in a New Jersey Senate race opened up by a bribery scandal

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey voters are deciding between Democratic U.S. Rep. Andy Kim and hotel developer Curtis Bashaw, a Republican, in the race to fill the Senate seat occupied until recently by Democrat Bob Menendez, who resigned following afederal bribery conviction.

The Senate race has attracted attention because of Democrats’ razor-thin majority. There’s little margin of error for the party in a state like New Jersey, which hasn’t elected a Republican to the Senate in more than 50 years.

“I very much feel the pressure to make sure that we’re delivering not just for New Jersey, but delivering a majority for this country so I can get the important things done,” Kim said recently.

The contest pits Kim, a three-term House member from New Jersey’s 3rd District, against Bashaw, a first-time candidate and businessman from Cape May. Four others including Green, Libertarian and Socialist party candidates are on the ballot.

There’s little suspense surrounding New Jersey’s electoral votes in the contest between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former president Donald Trump, who has golf courses across the state and once operated a casino empire in Atlantic City. New Jersey hasn’t gone with a Republican for president since 1988.

Kim, 42, was first elected to Congress in 2018, defeating Republican Tom MacArthur, a Trump ally. He’s since been re-elected twice. During the campaign, Kim said he would oppose tax breaks for the wealthy and support abortion rights.

A former Obama administration national security aide, Kim was a Rhodes Scholar and has a Ph.D. from Oxford. He’s presented himself as an unassuming, hard-working official and gained national attention in 2021 when he was spotted cleaning up the U.S. Capitol after the Jan. 6 insurrection, bagging trash.

Kim was the first Asian-American from New Jersey elected to the House and would become the first Korean-American in the Senate if elected.

Bashaw has personally financed his campaign with at least $1 million, according to Federal Election Commission records. He gained the GOP nomination in June when he defeated a Trump-backed rival. A first-time candidate, he’s served on several boards including for Stockton University and a state tourism panel.

Bashaw, 64, has said he considers himself a moderate, noting he supports abortion rights and is a married gay man.

“When my party’s right, I will support it. But when my party’s not right, I’ll stand up against it,” he said recently.

Bashaw has said he supports Trump, who’s been a lightning rod in the state. Democrats flipped four congressional seats in the 2018 midterm while Trump was president.

Kim seized on that in a recent debate.

“The one endorsement that he has made is for Donald Trump to be president of the United States. And I guess we get a sense of his judgment from that. And it’s something I deeply disagree with,” Kim said.

The Senate race began chaotically for Democrats. The party, which controls the Legislature and the governorship, found itself with an incumbent senator facing a second federal corruption trial. Menendez was convicted on bribery charges that he traded his office for cash, gold cars and a luxury car, and has resigned. But he’s denied the charges — as he did in the earlier trial, which ended in a hung jury.

This time, Democrats abandoned him. Kim launched his own race in defiance of Menendez the day after his indictment last fall.

But it wasn’t an easy path to the nomination. First lady Tammy Murphy launched a campaign that was well-funded and widely backed by insiders. Kim upended politics in New Jersey when he sued in federal court to stop a practice whereby party leaders were allowed to influence how ballots are drawn up, widely seen as helping preferred candidates. The judge, in an initial ruling, sided with Kim. Murphy dropped out and Kim won easily in June.

The winner of the Senate race is expected to get an early shot at the job. After Menendez resigned, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy appointed George Helmy as interim senator. The two have said that once the election results are certified in November, Helmy will step down and the governor will appoint the winner to serve the remainder of Menendez’s term, which ends in January.

Also up for grabs are all of New Jersey’s 12 U.S. House seats. Among them, the 7th District, which stretches from the Delaware River and the Pennsylvania line to the central part of the state, with a slice of the New York suburbs, is perhaps the most closely watched. There, Republican Tom Kean Jr. is running for reelection against former Working Families alliance official Sue Altman, a Democrat. New Jersey’s House delegation has 10 Democrats and three Republicans.

Votes have poured in for weeks through mail-in ballots and early in-person voting, but results don’t come out until after polls close at 8 p.m. On the ballot as well are all 12 of the state’s House seats.

Mike Catalini, The Associated Press