The fight for New Jersey's open Senate seat presents a simple choice:
For most New Jersey voters, Donald Trump looms over this year’s Senate race.
Curtis Bashaw is a supporter of Trump, and a Trump victory would strengthen Republican control of the Senate. If Mr. Bashaw wins these blue states, it will ensure that the Republican Party takes control, returning MAGA conservatives to power and giving Mr. Trump more power to carry out his mischief. It will be.
Lest we forget, Mitch McConnell, who announced he was stepping away from leadership roles in November, was running the show when he turned the Senate into a legislative graveyard and did things like lower prescription drug costs. , thwarted even the most common-sense efforts to reduce gun violence. He led the lawsuit to strip health insurance from 32 million Americans by repealing the Affordable Care Act. Most notoriously, he pulled off a deranged Supreme Court heist that blocked Barack Obama’s nominees with bogus procedural arguments that Trump discarded once he took power.
Are we now going to re-empower conservative hardliners and deny Democratic presidents the power to make court appointments? And if Trump wins, will Senate leaders help fuel three more judicial extremists? With abortion already banned in 20 states, is that a risk we want to take? We have heard enough cruel stories from these states of women who died without access to this care.
Even putting all that aside, Bashaw himself is a very flawed candidate. He is a well-meaning and courteous man with an impressive history of success in business. But he has no experience in elected office and no ability to lead the most important issues he will face in the Senate.
Moreover, he contorts himself in trying to explain away his support for Trump, resulting in some really confusing sophistry.
Get an abortion. Although he describes himself as pro-choice, he supports the Supreme Court’s decision that took away that right and allowed states to ban abortion completely. He said the court was right to send the issue back to the states, but now supports federal legislation that guarantees abortion rights nationwide. Which one?
He also said there should be limits on how far abortions are allowed, but declined to say at what point. And by supporting Mr. Trump, he opens the door to the possibility of three more conservative justices, and as the Alabama Supreme Court recently ruled, life begins at conception. There is a serious risk that abortion will be banned across the United States, based on the theory that abortion will begin. If that happens, infertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization will also be prohibited.
Bashaw is not pro-choice no matter how you try to spin this. He is a gay man who celebrates the state’s protection of the right to marry. How can he celebrate the end of Roe v. Wade, which stripped similar protections for women seeking abortions?
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Bashaw was clearly an intelligent man and a successful businessman who operated a series of popular hotels, the best known of which was Cape May’s landmark Congress Hall. He started with 30 employees and now has more than 1,000 employees, and served as executive director of the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority under former Gov. Jim McGreevey.
But he hasn’t done his homework. Asked if he supported Joe Biden’s Inflation Control Act, a huge bill that would set new policy on climate change and reduce prescription drug costs, Bashaw said, “I don’t think there’s enough legislation on the bill to say whether I voted for it or not.” I don’t know much about it.” ”
“I don’t really know the details of the bill,” he said when asked about a recent bipartisan bill that would spend billions of dollars on border security.
What about the expansion of the Child Tax Credit, which cut child poverty by nearly half before it expires in 2021? Will he extend it? He said only that he would “carefully consider it.”
Do you have any objections to the actions Mr. McConnell has taken? Bashaw didn’t seem to know, saying only, “I have the skill set to go in there and fix things.”
These are big questions that matter to everyday people. Bashaw’s main economic argument is that the government needs to stop spending a lot of money, but when asked which programs he would cut, he seemed unsure. He only suggested some possible adjustments to Social Security eligibility for young people and high-income earners.
Meanwhile, even though he is a fiscal conservative, he is leaning toward extending the Trump tax cuts, which will cost more than $4 trillion over the next decade, which will be difficult to counter. When asked about the tax cuts for the middle class, he said they were within the scope of Trump’s tax cuts, even if they were small compared to what the wealthy would gain.
Regarding Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, Bashaw calls it an expensive and poorly targeted program, casting some light on the idea of price controls that Kamala Harris seems to be promoting. is correct, and he thinks so rationally. That’s a mistake.
But our economy is in shambles, and the idea that Trump is the one to fix it is an illusion. Many economists fear that his plan to significantly increase tariffs will cause inflation. And now, inflation is under control, unemployment is low, and real wages are higher than before the pandemic. Leading economists and investment bankers have warned that President Trump’s policies will worsen inflation and cause the national deficit to explode.
The same goes for borders. Re-empowering a man who wants to ban all Muslims and spread racist lies about Haitians who eat pets just to excite his own base will never lead to a reasonable compromise. You won’t be able to see it. With President Trump’s encouragement, Republicans blocked a bipartisan reform bill in February that would have provided $118 billion, all aimed at improving border security. .
The conclusion is this. Bashaw could be a great candidate for the state House, but he’s just not ready for the U.S. Senate. But it’s a relief not to hear the cynical attempts to stoke anger from Trump and his followers in New Jersey, including Bill Spadea and Rep. Jeff Van Drew.
“I want to bring back empathy and civil dialogue,” Bashaw said, not sounding like she’s dancing for the MAGA crowd. I can’t help but get the impression that he doesn’t believe it.
But if he’s selling his soul to win the presidency, is that a good thing? “When my party is wrong, I stand up to them,” Bashaw said. So why does he support Trump?
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Andy Kim, on the other hand, has the experience, personality, and knowledge of issues to be an effective senator from day one. He is firmly entrenched in the mainstream and has led in a Congressional district that Trump twice won.
Bashaw tries to characterize himself as an insider, but that’s completely wrong. Kim is the man who defeated the machine-elected first lady, Tammy Murphy, and brought down New Jersey’s old machine-style political system by filing a lawsuit that overrode the machine’s power to control the primary election through voter fraud. Party leaders did not like him from the beginning because he did not kneel.
Kim served in Afghanistan as a Rhodes Scholar, advised two U.S. military commanders, Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. John Allen, and has since dedicated his life to public service as a White House point person on Iraq issues. . It is an insult to belittle Mr. Bashaw by calling him a career bureaucrat.
Having national security confidence and experience in turbulent conflict zones is critical at this dangerous time, as we face escalating wars in Gaza and Ukraine and the frightening prospect of war between Israel and Iran. is.
When it comes to Israel, for example, we need to make sure we “don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Bashaw said. Mr. Kim speaks with even more nuance. It supports efforts to put more pressure on the two countries to come up with a hostage deal that could result in a ceasefire.
Kim points out that the continued military escalation makes diplomacy far less likely. “We’re moving further and further away from what I thought was our primary goal, which was to get the hostages back.”
He is also an uncompromising champion of saving our democracy in moments of crisis and can be trusted to do the right thing on climate, child care, abortion, and affordability for families.
Remember, Kim got into politics in the first place because of the Republican Party’s efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and the leader of that brazen effort, former Congressman Tom MacArthur. This is because I felt inspired to stand up and run for office. Since then, Kim has become a leader in the fight to lower the cost of prescription drugs and countless other policies to help hard-working middle-class people.
This choice is obvious. While Mr. Kim is well-versed in all these issues and has a PhD in foreign policy in perilous times, Mr. Bashaw has difficulty even explaining his position on some key issues. He wants us to believe we’ll learn it when we get to Washington, but that’s asking too much. We support Mr. Kim unconditionally.
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