(upbeat music) - We're back again.

The question is who will be New Jersey's next United States Senator replacing US Senator Robert Menendez.

We're now joined by Curtis Bashaw, who is the Republican candidate for the US Senate and a very successful businessman entrepreneur in the Cape May, South Jersey area.

Good to see you, Curtis.

- Good to be here, Steve.

Thanks for having me.

- The most pressing economic issues related to affordability in New Jersey and the nation are A and B as the US Senator, what would you do?

- I believe the most pressing issue for New Jerseyans has been the price of our consumer goods.

People are worried about the inflation that's happened over the last four years.

And I believe the solution to this isn't price controls or draconian far extreme policies, but really reining and spending and growing our economy.

We need to unshackle our small businesses from too much regulation in New Jersey, and we can't spend our way to prosperity.

That's a failed policy.

We need to have fiscal discipline in Washington.

And as a political outsider and a businessman who's made a payroll every two weeks for 35 years, I wanna go to Washington and fix this stuff.

We need common sense solutions, not another round of political insiders and bureaucrats.

- Vice President Harris, former Senator Harris has talked about price controls and dealing with price gouging.

You have a problem with that?

- I do.

I don't think price controls are solution.

Price gouging is already illegal.

That's something that we can pursue if in fact that's happening across our country.

But price controls are a failed policy of totalitarian states that have led to bread lines.

We need to grow our economy.

We need common sense fiscal discipline.

I've made a budget for 35 years for our hotels.

We have to live by a budget.

We just can't spend recklessly.

It devalues the dollar and makes things more expensive.

- Curtis, I was remiss.

Explain to folks real quick, 30 seconds or less, you as a hotel owner, operator in the Cape May area.

Talk about that real quick.

- Well, I started my business in 1989 with 30 employees renovating an old historic hotel called The Virginia.

I still own and operate it.

We've expanded through the renovation of Congress Hall, other properties to over 1,100 employees.

I work with that team to create an economy that has supported 800 families, mortgages and rents, and car payments.

I'm a business guy that knows what it's like to live by a budget, to sign the front side of a paycheck, and to get things done.

- How would you describe the current immigration situation?

A, B, is it a crisis?

And C, what would you do as a US senator if elected?

- Wow.

Well, I do think it's absolutely a crisis.

I went to the border myself a few months ago and stood at an unfinished section of the wall in Yuma, Arizona and watched 62 people walk unfettered into our country.

It was shocking to me to be there in person.

It's one of the top issues resonating in New Jerseyans as I crisscrossed the state talking to people.

I think we need to decouple border security from immigration policy.

We've politicized it.

A country has a boundary.

That's called a border.

Countries have ports of entry.

They should be lockable.

I lock the back door of my house at night.

And so to me, that's not a partisan issue.

That's just an issue of knowing who's coming into your home.

And then immigration policy however, I think we need to roll up our sleeves in a bipartisan way and solve it.

New Jersey's an immigrant state.

A third of my thousand employees are first or second generation Americans who came here legally.

This has been kicked around, politicized, and its just crazy that we don't have a streamlined, legal immigration process.

We need to solve it in a bipartisan manner, and that's why I wanna go to Washington.

- Got it.

But Curtis, lemme ask you this.

Congressman Kim said this, and it's factually true by any reasonable standard, that there was an effort, a bipartisan, you used the term bipartisan.

There was a bipartisan effort in Congress to come up with a not perfect, but an improved plan through legislation.

It has been argued and there's clear evidence that former President Trump, the Republican candidate for president discouraged Speaker Johnson and other Republican leaders from going along with it because quote, "He needed the immigration issue as a candidate."

Was that the right thing to do, Curtis?

- If the way you characterize it is correct, I don't think that's the right thing to do.

- Do you think it was different?

Do you think that's a mischaracterization?

- I don't know, Steve.

I'm running for Senate in New Jersey.

I wasn't there reading that law.

But what I would say is just as I worked with Democrats and Republicans when I was appointed by a Democratic governor in our state to run one of the largest state agencies in New Jersey, I am a problem solver.

I will go to Washington to work together.

I don't think that we win or solve problems from the extremes.

We win from the middle, of people working together to get things done.

So, I have the spirit of that and I believe that immigration needs to be tackled in that manner.

What happened a few months back?

I didn't write the bill.

I didn't vote on the bill and I wasn't there.

- But you're aware of it.

Sorry for interrupting, but you're aware of it.

And you're also aware that former President Trump, the candidate for the presidency, has argued for a mass deportation.

Extreme or the right approach?

- I think that we can't physically handle that much of a disruption in our country.

I think that we need to vet the people that have come here and we need to make sure that anyone with criminal activity is not in our country.

And we need a legal pathway for people to make themselves at home.

But job one, Steve, is to secure the border now.

It makes no sense to me that we have a back door that people just walk through and violate the immigration laws that we do have on the book.

Why are we not enforcing those?

- Has the Biden-Harris administration failed in this regard, Curtis?

- I believe they have.

I think it's a failed policy that's disrupted.

It's the number three issue in our conversations with citizens across our state.

After inflation and affordability is one.

Corruption and insider dealing in Washington is two.

And the third issue is border security.

People don't, we already have limited housing supply in our state.

We already have affordability issues.

To have people we don't even know who they are coming into our state, getting driver's licenses, moving into our neighborhoods is upsetting not just to Republicans.

It's upsetting to Independent unaffiliated voters and to Democrats.

It's a common sense issue.

- Another issue that a lot of people are concerned about, not just women, disproportionately them, but not just women is abortion.

Can you clarify for us exactly what your position is?

You are pro-choice, you've said.

But you also, and people can watch the Congressman Kim interview.

He said, and it's been reported that you quote, "Support the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v Wade and moved the abortion issue back to the states."

Is that an accurate description of your position?

- I understand what the Supreme Court did in Dobbs in saying that they don't think the court should be doing legislative duties.

It's not in the Constitution.

I will vote for any bipartisan measure in the United States Senate that would codify a woman's right to choose.

- National?

- I'm pro choose.

Absolutely.

I am pro-choice.

I'm a married gay man.

I believe in liberty.

I don't believe the government should be coming into our homes and our families and telling us what to do in these personal decisions.

So, it's inconvenient for the Democrat narrative this fall that I'm a pro-choice Republican, but that's who I am.

- Biggest reason why Congressman Kim, in your view, should not be a United States Senator?

- I think Andy Kim is soft on the border.

He's equivocated about it, and it's a huge concern for all New Jerseyans.

He's not good on the economy either.

He's for these far Left progressive caucus concepts that are pushing towards socialism.

He's an insider.

He's never created a job, yet he wants to opine on what our fair share of taxes should be.

I think he's wrong.

He's soft on Israel.

I believe Israel, we have to have peace through strength, I don't think should be negotiating with terrorists.

So, Andy Kim is a three-term congressman that I don't think is ready for promotion to the United States Senate.

And he's outside of the mainstream of where New Jersey voters are.

We're an independent breed in our state.

There are moderate Democrats, Independents, and unaffiliated voters that are gonna, they're gonna vote for us because we bring outsider experience, can do, know-how in business, and we wanna work with everybody to get things done.

- The term socialist has been used a lot.

He will argue that he is clearly not.

People can decide from themselves.

When you talked about extreme, may I ask you this.

There are many who argue that the presidential candidate of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, is extreme, more specifically that he would not accept the results of the 2020 election.

That he contributed significantly to January 6th, and the horrific events at the Capitol.

A, do you believe that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election?

- Yes, I am on the record of saying, I believe Joe Biden was elected legitimately in 2020.

And I think that election integrity is an important issue and we need to make sure that we work going forward.

It's one of our most sacred bonds to our free society, is that we have free and fair elections.

So, we have to make sure we all do our part as citizens to watch the polls, and we need to make sure we have election integrity, including, in my opinion, some voter ID.

But Steve, I'm not Donald Trump.

I'm Curtis Bashaw.

- But respectfully, but you're voting.

I'm sorry, but you said you have voted for Donald Trump.

You said you voted for him in the primary.

Will you vote for him again on November the 5th?

We cannot have four more years of the same stuff that we've had.

We need change.

New Jerseyans are hungry for change.

We can't have this foreign policy that's led to chaos around the world.

We can't have the inflation that we've had.

We need a secure border.

These are bread and butter, kitchen table, common sense issues that Kamala Harris has been on the ticket for four years and could have solved.

So, voting with the Republicans for the top of the ticket.

But I'll say this.

People of goodwill are gonna disagree about the top of the ticket.

There's no perfect candidate.

I'm not a perfect candidate.

But I know that I'm the better candidate for United States Senate.

There's gonna be people that vote for Kamala that pull for our seat because we're the ones that can go to Washington and get real stuff done for New Jerseyans.

We're 49th in what we get back from the federal government out of 50 states.

I don't like being second to last.

That's under a democratic monopoly on the Senate seat that's been there for 52 years.

I believe we can do better.

- Curtis Bashaw is running for the United States Senate against Andy Kim.

Who will be New Jersey's next senator?

Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, the candidates for president.

The election is on November the 5th.

First of all, I cannot thank you enough for joining us, Curtis.

We appreciate it.

Wish you and your team all the best.

Okay?

- Thank you, Steve.

Great to be here.

Have a good day.

Thanks.

- You got it.

I'm Steve Adubato.

That is Curtis Bashaw.

And I wanna say this to folks.

I say it all the time.

November 5th is the election.

Democracy, not a spectator sport.

Make sure you vote.

I'm Steve Adubato.

We'll see you next time.

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