Bashaw and Kim face off in News 12 Senate debate

Republican Curtis Bashaw and Democrat Andy Kim want to hit the reset button after Bob Menendez’s corruption conviction, but in their third and final debate in their campaign for a seat in the US Senate, they disagreed on issues such as abortion, Israel and Hamas, political corruption and immigration. .

Kim promised to deliver for his home state.

“You don’t deserve a performance, you don’t deserve theater, you deserve results, and that’s the kind of senator I will be for New Jersey,” Kim said.

Bashaw said he ran because “New Jersey is ready for change.”

“I don’t think we should keep sending a political insider, career politicians, to represent us in Washington, like Bob Menendez or Andy Kim,” Bashaw said. “We need a new perspective in Washington to do better for New Jersey.

He said after Democrats held both state Senate seats since 1982, it was time for a change.

“I also think we need a Republican senator there to give it a try. We have been working with two Democrats for 50 years,” Bashaw said. “We can do better.

Bashaw claimed that the best way to avoid another corrupt senator for New Jersey is to prevent career politicians from dominating Congress.

“It was the intention of the founding fathers that citizens would run for office. “They weren’t necessarily going to be career politicians who were going to be there forever and ever, and who were going to put their own interests above those of their country or their state,” Bashaw proclaimed. “This whole thing, this stench of corruption, has been hanging around there for a long time. That’s why I believe it’s time for change, for political outsiders, not career politicians, to enter this race and win.”

Kim, a three-term congressman, called for a “new era of politics.”

“We have to change course, change trajectory, and that means we can’t just have the same old politics,” the Democratic candidate said.

He criticized Bashaw for donating more than $60,000 to Republican county chairmen during his primary campaigns, and pointed to his own lawsuit to abolish county organizational lines.

Kim slammed Bashaw for opposing New Jersey’s system of “unfair voting design… something that played a major role in entrenching machine politics in our state.”

“I stood up for my party. “I stood up against the brokenness in our political system to be able to show that if there is corruption, we don’t care if it’s Democrats or Republicans, we will stand up against it,” he said. “And I stood up to party leaders when the unfair system of how our elections were run, and we could change Jersey politics forever.”

Kim accused former President Donald Trump of eliminating the state and local property tax deduction, calling it a “direct attack on us.”

“He made it very clear why he was doing this for political purposes. And not only that: where did the resources go? He gave huge tax breaks to the largest corporations and the wealthiest Americans, and that is not the priority that New Jersey families want,” Kim said. “That is why I disagree with my opponent, Mr. Bashaw, someone who strongly supports Donald Trump, supports his agenda, someone who supported the president who put us in this position to begin with.”

Bashaw then hit back.

“You know, Congressman, I know it would be easier for you if you ran against Donald Trump. You’re not. You’re taking on Curtis Bashaw,” he declared. “I think it’s more practical and better for New Jersey on these budget issues, on what we get back, to have one Republican there working with Republicans to get things done for our state.”

Kim blasted Bashaw for changing his position on abortion, supporting the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and putting the issue in the hands of individual states during the Republican primaries, then campaigning as a pro-choice Republican the general elections.

“This is the problem. We don’t know what to believe,” Kim said. “What we see are purely issues of opportunism and not of real values.”

He said his belief that abortion is a constitutional right puts him and Bashaw on different sides.

“I will fight for this. I will make sure we are involved in this. I will make it a top priority,” Kim said. “If Mr. Bashaw is in the Senate and has put forward a Republican majority in the Senate, that majority will absolutely block any attempt to codify women’s reproductive rights in this country, and that is what is at stake in this election is at stake.”

Bashaw pushed back, promising to vote independently.

“If my party is right, I will agree and support it, and if my party is not right, I will oppose it because I am Curtis Bashaw, and that is who I am, and I am pro-choice,” he said. he said. “I think working on federal, bipartisan legislation would lead us to a point of compromise where we wouldn’t have a policy that would allow for the ninth month. And I think that’s a reasonable conversation, and also about parental consent for minor children.

Bashaw questioned Kim’s record on immigration and suggested the country needs more federal immigration judges to address the $3 million backlog of cases.

“This answer sounds like Washington, DC to me. If all that is true, common sense would dictate: Why have we kept the border open for the past four years under Biden-Harris and your administrations? I mean, you voted against common sense border security measures seven times, and there may have been half a million illegals living in New Jersey,” Bashaw said. “I am for common sense. We need to close and secure the border now. to illegal immigration. That’s like locking your house when you go to sleep.”

Kim said he supports a secure border.

“We want to make sure we do this in a comprehensive way. There is no magic wand we can wave,” he said. “What we don’t want is we don’t want just the toxic rhetoric that attacks Haitian migrants and others in our community who are here because they’re trying to build a better life, and I hope we can all agree on that. ”

News 12 viewer Aaron Goldblatt of Bedminster asked the candidates about their support for Israel in its war with Hamas.

“Israel has a right to exist, a right to defend itself. What we want to make sure going forward is that we think about the 101 hostages that are still being held and try to make sure that we can get them back as quickly as humanly possible,” Kim said. “And that’s where I think the pressure and the priority should be, and the work that we need to do to try to build.”

Kim, a former White House national security official, explained that there is “not just a military solution.”

“The longer this war goes on, the longer the conflict extends, the further it goes, the harder it is for us to see how it is that we are going to find a hostage deal to bring the hostages home. , to be able to put an end to this violence and try to build sustainable security in the future, allowing the people of the region, including the Israeli people, to get the kind of security they deserve, rather than this cycles of violence that we continue to see,” he stated.

Bashaw said he could not tell from Kim’s response “whether he thinks there is a moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel.”

“I believe that Israel has a right to exist. It has the right not only to defend itself, but to win,” Bashaw said. “

He accused Kim of voting to recognize Iran and lift sanctions that funded Hezbollah.

“We know that we do not negotiate with terrorists. Why do we expect Israel to do that? I see no moral equivalence between the two,” Bashaw said. “Good for Israel that it got the leader of Hezbollah. That’s important. That will move this to the field.”

Kim mentioned lowering the price of prescription drugs, lowering housing costs and helping small businesses make New Jersey more affordable.

“This is the most important issue I’m hearing about during the campaign. So many families are struggling, which is why I have made it my top priority in my work for the past six years,” he said. “The way I hear it is people say it feels like death by a thousand cuts.”

Bashaw talked about his career as a businessman.

“I live on a budget,” the Cape May hotel owner said. “We cannot spend our way to prosperity. We cannot tax our path to fiscal health, and we cannot regulate our path to growth and innovation. So I believe we need to make sure we stop passing on trillions and trillions of dollars of spending as if that’s going to solve inflation. That’s going to make it worse.”

News 12 New Jersey anchor Eric Landskroner moderated the debate over the U.S. Senate seat occupied since September by George Helmy, who took over after Menendez resigned.