Democratic U.S. Rep. Andy Kim won Tuesday’s election to become New Jersey’s newest member of the U.S. Senate, claiming the open seat once held by the disgraced Robert Menendez and punctuating a dramatic campaign that unexpectedly upended the state’s party-boss power structure.
Kim defeated Republican businessman Curtis Bashaw in the general election to make history a few ways. He will become the first Asian American senator from New Jersey and the first U.S. senator of Korean descent from any state. The Moorestown resident will also be the first U.S. senator from South Jersey since 1955.
The AP called the race at 8 p.m., just as polls closed, with only 3% of votes counted. By 8 a.m. Wednesday, with 91% of the votes counted, Kim led Bashaw by about 8 percentage points, 53% to 45%.
The 42-year-old Kim, a three-term congressman who stunningly outlasted the state’s first lady for his party’s nomination and led a successful lawsuit to strike down a controversial primary ballot system, will move up to the Senate, winning a six-year term in the seat Menendez had held since 2006.
Menendez, a fellow Democrat, launched an independent campaign to keep the seat even after he was indicted on federal corruption charges last September, including that he accepted gold bars as a bribe. But he was convicted in July, resigned in August, dropped his bid, and now awaits sentencing.
Kim, the son of Korean immigrants and a former Rhodes Scholar and national security analyst, told supporters Tuesday at a Cherry Hill hotel he was having “a hard time processing this moment.”
“Look what we’ve been able to do,” Kim said in a victory-party speech. “A year ago, few believed we could show what we accomplished. We showed politics isn’t some exclusive club.”
The Boston-born Kim noted he chose the hotel because it’s where his family stayed when they moved to New Jersey in his childhood.
“The greatness of America is not what we take from this country but what we give back,” he said. “It is what we pass down as I look to my parents and as I look to my two boys — the hope I give for the same opportunities and the certainty that my parents gave us when we first came to this hotel nearly 40 years ago.”
Moments after the AP swiftly called the race, Bashaw questioned whether it was too soon to know for sure. But he conceded about 90 minutes later in a speech to supporters at the Old Mill Inn in Basking Ridge.
The 64-year-old Bashaw, an openly gay moderate Republican who walked a tight rope on former President Donald Trump, said he was proud of the “honest campaign, based on policy.”
“We ran our our race, and owned our own lane and fought well,” Bashaw said. “I believe we have fought a good fight. This race has played by the rules of our American values, keeping it civil and on the issues.”
Kim’s victory continues a half-century winning streak for Democrats, who haven’t lost a U.S. Senate race in the Garden State since 1972 — when Richard Nixon was still president and the Yankees had only 20 of their 27 World Series titles.
It was a bright spot for the party as Republicans retook control of the Senate — Congress’ upper house — and Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris to regain the presidency. Even Kim’s margin was smaller than polls that showed him with a double-digit advantage heading in.
Both Kim and Bashaw, a wealthy hotel developer and first-time candidate, promised to restore integrity to the seat in the wake of the shocking charges against Menendez.
Bashaw, who defeated a challenger endorsed by Trump in the GOP primary, was an atypical Republican candidate in today’s age: a self-described pro-choice centrist vying to become New Jersey’s first openly gay member of Congress.
Republicans felt this race was their best chance in years to end their decades of losing in the blue state as Bashaw courted independent and unaffiliated voters that are critical for a GOP contender to win a statewide race here.
Democrat Andy Kim (left) faced Republican Curtis Bashaw (right) in big race for Robert Menendez’s U.S. Senate seat.Illustration | NJ Advance Media
But Kim had built momentum in a head-spinning Democratic primary in which he became an anti-establishment candidate.
Top Democratic leaders in the state called on Menendez to step down after he was indicted, though he vowed his innocence and refused.
Kim, a relatively low-profile and mild-mannered congressman representing central and south Jersey’s 3rd District, jumped into the race the day after the charges against Menendez were announced. Before that, he gained his most fame for helping clean up the U.S. Capitol after the Jan. 6 riot.
But Kim stayed in even after First Lady Tammy Murphy, the wife of Gov. Phil Murphy, won the endorsement from several of the state’s top Democrats.
He also sued in an attempt to end the “county line,” a decades-old — and long-debated — system in which candidates endorsed by powerful county party leaders receive top placement on the primary ballot. Murphy stood to benefit the most from the system, which led to backlash from critics who said she was being bolstered by nepotism and her husband’s power — charges the Murphys denied.
Bolstered by a wave of progressive support, Kim beat Murphy at most county party conventions where secret ballots were held. Murphy won most of the public votes.
Murphy ultimately dropped out, saying she didn’t want to wage a big battle against a fellow Democrat in a big year. Then, a judge sided with Kim in his suit, declaring the ballot setup unconstitutional and jolting the state’s political universe. Kim later easily won the party’s nomination over two opponents despite some of the party bosses privately remaining upset with him.
The general election was also intriguing.
Bashaw tried to navigate the challenge of running alongside Trump in blue Jersey. He beat Mendham Mayor Christine Serrano Glassner, a Trump-endorsed Trump loyalist, to win the GOP nomination. But while Bashaw said he would vote for the former president and Republican presidential nominee, he also distanced himself from Trump, who lost the state in his previous two races by double digits.
In the end, Trump surprisingly lost New Jersey by only single digits Tuesday as he sought to return to the White House.
Asked Tuesday night to talk about the challenge of running with Trump at the top of the ticket, Bashaw said: “I’m Curtis Bashaw. I’m not anybody else. And I am a business guy that built a business payroll by payroll, budget by budget. I feel like the acrimony in our politics is not where we want it to be. I think New Jersey is a moderate state and people just want to get things done.”
“America is best governed from the middle, not the extremes,” Bashaw added during his speech, saying his campaign was not about “tearing people down.”
Bashaw and Kim clashed over abortion and immigration, but never with the vitriol seen in other races.
Notably, Bashaw said he supported passing a federal law to allow abortion rights in all 50 states. Kim, though, noted Bashaw also praised the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned Roe vs. Wade.
Kim ultimately led in fundraising and public polling, even though many voters said they didn’t know much about either candidate.
Now, Kim will become New Jersey’s first newly elected senator since Cory Booker won his seat in 2013. Booker is now the state’s senior senator.
Kim may not have to wait long to be sworn in. After Menendez resigned, Gov. Murphy named his former chief of staff, George Helmy, to temporarily hold the seat until the outcome of this race. He promised to appoint the winner after the election is certified.
That means Kim could take office this year, giving him seniority over his fellow freshman senators who won’t be sworn in until January.
Four independent or third-party candidates also ran: Kenneth Kaplan, Christina Khalil, Joanne Kuniansky, and Patricia Mooneyham.
Kim declared in his speech that this is “a new era of politics rising.”
“The same old, same old is done,” he said. “We’ve shown the country that there’s a better way to be able to do this. It could mean a politics that lifts people up, that gives people hope, that delivers for everyone. It could mean a politics that changes the trajectory of our nation and builds a brighter future.”
Stories by Brent Johnson
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Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on X at @johnsb01.
Susan K. Livio may be reached at slivio@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SusanKLivio.