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[MOTIVATIONAL MUSIC] - Hi everyone.

Steve Adubato, an incredibly important half hour on who will be New Jersey's next United States Senator.

First up is Congressman Andy Kim.

On the second half of this program, businessman Curtis Bashaw will be joining us talking policy.

We start off with Andy Kim.

Good to see you, Congressman.

- Hi.

Thanks for having me on.

- You got it.

Congressman, let's start off with the economy, number one, not just in New Jersey, in the nation, the most pressing economic issue you see and what you would do if elected to the Senate would be?

- Well, the most pressing issue right now is about affordability.

I mean, I can't tell you how many New Jersey families right now are telling me how much they're struggling.

Housing costs, food costs, healthcare costs, you know, this is something that I've been pressing on for my entire time in Congress.

Taking action, the legislation that would lower prescription drug costs cap insulin costs at $35 a month.

The legislation I passed and wrote that would cap out-of-pocket costs for seniors when it comes to prescription drugs, I'll continue to fight efforts where we can invest more into housing support and other aspects of people's lives.

You know, this is why I helped pass the infrastructure laws so we can have more resources back to try to help defray, you know, public transit costs, you know, which we know are continuing to rise.

So I'm gonna continue to push on this, make sure that we're addressing the needs that so many families are facing right now.

I, you know, the way they often describe it to me is it feels like death from a thousand cuts, you know, childcare here and healthcare and housing.

So we need to make sure we take a comprehensive approach to address it.

- And Congressman, I appreciate you saying what you would do and what you have done, but the question also is, for you as a Democrat, how would you rate the Biden-Harris administration on the economy, slash inflation, slash affordability?

You think they've done well?

- Well, look, there's certainly a lot more that we need to do.

I mean, our economy certainly has covered faster from, and better from the pandemic than most other nations.

Not all the other developed nations.

But what we know is that it hasn't been working for everybody.

You know, we've seen this recovery where, you know, those that had a lot of resources going into the pandemic have a lot more, and those that were struggling before are often struggling more.

So yes, we wanna make sure we're taking action.

But you know, what I find frustrating is that the Republicans in Congress have been impeding our ability to take measures like the Childcare Affordability Act or other things that are gonna be able to defray a lot of the costs that people are facing right now.

So, yes, you know, we are continuing to push on this, try to address the needs, but we need a person in the White House as well as in the Senate and in the House of Representatives that are gonna be able to tackle this.

Right now with Speaker Johnson, you know, he's tried to cut, you know, head start, support for so many low income families and other things, it's a real problem.

- Okay, you know, it's interesting you talked about Republicans, what they've stopped from your point of view.

Talk about immigration.

First, do you acknowledge that the immigration problem is a serious crisis in our nation?

- Oh yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

- Okay.

- It's a it's a real mess.

- Okay.

A real mess.

Has it not gotten, I'll ask it that way.

Has it not gotten worse congressman, during the Biden-Harris administration?

- Well, it's been getting worse over a number of years, including through the Trump presidency as well.

You know, what we see right now is a growing problem that has stemmed from years of neglect where neither, you know, where neither party been able to take the action for the kind of comprehensive immigration reform that is needed.

So it's been compounding and it's a mess.

I mean, I say that as someone who worked in national security over the course of my career prior to being in Congress, you know, I'm somebody that dedicated my life to try to keep this country safe, try to make sure we can have control over our borders.

I did a lot of work on counter-terrorism.

So of course, I want to keep this country safe.

I want us to have control over our borders.

And this is a big problem that you really stems from a failure at the federal level for years.

- But that does include the Biden-Harris administration and what they've done or haven't done as it relates to the immigration crisis and the subsequent increase in crime, or at least the perception of increase in crime in urban communities where there's been an influx of migrants.

- Well, look, you know, what we've tried to do over the course, and you know, I say this in terms of the two years that I worked when Trump was president.

You know, we tried to engage in a conversation and a legislative process that would, you know, increase border security, but also would make investments into, for instance, the fact that we have only 682 federal immigration judges right now in the country with a 3 million case backlog.

You know, you're talking about, you know, the strain upon different cities and municipalities around New Jersey, around the country.

This is stemming from the fact that, you know, it's taking six years plus for, to adjudicate any of these cases.

It should be something that we can do in sixty days or less.

It should be the very kind of resources that we need.

We need that comprehensive approach.

And unfortunately, you know, when some of these ideas have come forward, like a bipartisan effort to negotiate on immigration, what we saw was former President Trump telling Speaker Johnson not to bring this up for a vote, telling him not to allow this to happen prior to election day.

So yes, you know, we see efforts that are trying to reach a bipartisan deal, and we're seeing Republican leaders in Congress as well as former President Trump stopping it.

- Abortion, you are pro-choice.

First, before we talk about what if any differences there are between you and your Republican opponent, Curtis Bashaw.

Question, do you favor the right in the state of New Jersey?

Because once the decision was made by the Supreme Court a couple years ago, it changed everything back to the states in terms of what the policy would be, the law would be on abortion.

Are you in favor of the right of a woman to have an abortion any month, including the ninth month, before she were to deliver?

- Well, look, first and foremost, yes, you know, I think, you know, what we've seen right now is that, you know, we need to protect the women's right to choose.

What we see is that, you know, very, the vast, vast, vast majority of that happening much earlier on, and then when it comes to the very end of the term, it really is about medical issues about life of the mother, you know?

And so, you know, this is something that I do feel like has been taken very much outta context.

- How so?

- It's been done in a way that makes it sound like this is happening frequently, that this is happening, you know, because someone just, you know, changes their mind at the end.

It really isn't.

You know, and I, and this is something that, you know, it does not even take place in New Jersey.

We do not have facilities that facilitate abortions that late in a pregnancy.

You know, it is not something that is happening and is often being utilized in a way as fear mongering.

I'll be honest.

And you know, what we see right now is so often the challenge that it's being faced is when you have, you know, so much divisiveness in our country on this, it's preventing women from being able to get the care that they need if they have a medical emergency at the end.

And we've seen cases where women have died in pregnancy and in labor 'cause of the inability to be able to get the kind of medical care that they need, whether it's a miscarriage or something else.

So I find this to be a very frustrating situation right now where, you know, the political disagreements are really leading to a lot of health problems.

- And Congressman, you've been very critical of your opponent.

Curtis Bashaw says that he is pro-choice.

You question whether he actually is.

Why is that?

- Well, because he supports the Dobbs decision.

He supports the Supreme Court's decision that takes away women's reproductive rights across our nation.

So I don't understand how Mr. Bashaw can call himself pro-choice when he's actually in favor of a process by which state legislators can take away those rights from women.

So, you know, whether he feels about that just personally does not matter.

What matters is what he would do as a senator of the United States, come New Jersey, and what we know is that he refuses to codify national reproductive rights.

He refuses to codify Roe or the Women's Health Protection Act, you know, in that kind of way, what he's doing is he's allowing women's freedoms in certain states around the country to be taken away.

I don't see how any definition of pro-choice encapsulates that kind of extreme perspective.

- Congressman, you, if elected to the Senate, will be your own person in the Senate, but at the same time, who becomes the President matters.

Question, that iconic picture of you on January 6th, the day after attempting to clean up the area.

- [Andy Kim] The rotunda.

- To what degree do you believe, Congressman Kim, that January 6th, that everything that led up to it, and its aftermath, the day itself, what do you think that says about the prospect of former President Donald Trump being elected again?

- Well, look, I worry a lot about, you know, the state of our democracy.

I mean, the fact on January 6th is our nation failed to have a peaceful transfer of power, and that really is devastating when you think about just how precarious and fragile things are when it comes to our governance, and the question is, has it gotten better?

You know, as we are approaching January 6th, 2025 and the certification of that election, do we feel confident that that day will go smoothly?

And the answer unfortunately is no.

I do not hope and expect that we'll have the same type of riot and assault upon the capital, but this question of whether or not we feel stronger as a country in terms of our unity, in terms of our commitment to democracy, commitment to our elections, and the answer unfortunately is no.

In fact, it feels like it's getting worse in many ways as we see the big divide continuing to grow, and former President Trump being instrumental in that type of distrust.

And I just don't understand how we can have this much distrust within our government and still feel like we have a strong democracy.

So this is very much a major concern and a threat.

I think that's why you see, you know, a number of Republicans and others standing up and speaking out against the challenges that former President Trump plays towards our democracy, and I hope certainly that on November 5th, that the people of America can choose us to go a different path and a path towards hopefully trying to heal this country.

It's gonna take some time, but it's necessary.

- Congressman, if you lose this race on January, excuse me, on November 5th, will you accept the results of the election- - Oh, of course.

- If you lose?

- Yeah, absolutely.

- Okay.

- Absolutely.

- And if the Vice President loses, you believe that she will accept the results of the election and engage in the peaceful transfer of power?

- No question.

- United States Congressman Andy Kim, running for the United States Senate.

Right after this we'll be joined by his Republican Congressman Kim's Republican opponent, Curtis Bashaw.

Congressman, thank you so much for joining us.

Wish you all the best.

- Thank you.

- You got it.

Stay with us.

We'll be right back.

To watch more Think Tank with Steve Adubato, find us online and follow us on social media.

- 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.

- [Narrator] Think Tank with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Celebrating 30 years in public broadcasting.

Funding has been provided by Holy Name.

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The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

And by these public spirited organizations, individuals and associations committed to informing New Jersey citizens about the important issues facing the Garden State.

Promotional support provided by NJ.Com.

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It has to be our best medicine, combined with large doses of empathy, kindness, dignity and respect.

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