When it comes to classifying Curtis Bashaw politically, it’s hard to place him neatly into a box. He doesn’t want to be placed in a box anyway.
The married, gay, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate is pro-choice, pro-police, and pro-Ukraine. He supports Israel and believes securing our southern border is of great importance.
Bashaw, 64, who lives with his husband, Will, in Cape May is challenging U.S. Rep. Andy Kim, 42, a Democrat representing New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District, for the U.S. Senate.
New Jersey hasn’t sent a Republican to the U.S. Senate since 1972. If elected, Bashaw would be New Jersey’s first openly LGBTQ senator. And it would likely tip the majority representation in that chamber in favor of the GOP.
“You don’t agree with anybody on everything. I don’t agree with my husband on everything, let alone a party or another candidate, so I’ve always been independent-minded, but I stuck more, my identify relates more to Republican values of liberty and prosperity than controlled economy, overregulation and committees telling us what to do.”
On freedom and opportunity
Giving citizens freedom to make their own decisions and having less government are values important to Bashaw. He also believes that creating businesses in a free-market economy can provide great opportunities for people.
The lifelong Republican, who grew up in Camden County, is a hotelier and entrepreneur, a businessman who started out 35 years ago with a small hotel and 20 employees and built his business up to over 1,100 employees and several hotels. He holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
“I think there’s no greater social program than a job,” Bashaw said. “I love being part of creating microeconomies.”
And the microeconomy Bashaw created provides the means for his employees to pay their rent or mortgage, to make car payments and to buy clothing for their families, he noted. “I’m proud of that work,” he said. “Freedom, to me, is the core value.”
On the state flag of New Jersey, for instance, the words “liberty” and “prosperity” appear, he said, “and I believe they’re inextricably linked.” In other words, one must have liberty in order to have prosperity, Bashaw said. “Too much regulation is less freedom. More government is less freedom, so I’m a free-market person. I’m a fiscal conservative. I’m a social moderate,” said Bashaw.
“the fact that my political and economic views tend to align me with Republicans doesn’t change my attractions that I have and my gender preferences.”
Is being LGBTQ and Republican incongruent?
According to the Pew Research Center, 83 percent of gay and bisexual men and women are Democrats or lean that way. (Data for transgender people was not available.) There are those in the LGBTQ community who believe one cannot, or should not, be LGBTQ and a member of the GOP.
Bashaw, of course, disagrees. So how would he respond to those who have that idea, and how has he reconciled his sexuality and his political beliefs within himself?
“I’m me, so it’s reconciled in me,” he said. “That’s who I am. And I think it’s not appropriate to create these checklists of orthodoxy that you’ve got to be this, this, this, and this to be this. It’s actually illiberal.”
Bashaw is a proud member of the LGBTQ community and wants the community to have civil liberties just like everyone else.
“I’m a strong supporter of that,” he said. “And at the same time, the fact that my political and economic views tend to align me with Republicans doesn’t change my attractions that I have and my gender preferences. So it kind of seems obvious to me that that’s a narrow policy and it’s us being too doctrinaire and not letting people think for themselves.”
Bashaw believes caucusing with Republicans as a gay man will be helpful to the LGBTQ community in spreading the community’s values.
“In business, I spent my career bringing people together to get things done. I think that we can still do that in our country. I think that’s the whole point of what a congressional leader would do. You’re going to work with people to get things done for our state, crossing the aisle, having conversations, learning, and growing.”
NEWS UPDATE as of 10-31-24
Message from Garden State Equality today: “Curtis Bashaw’s recent decision to sign the Moms for Liberty Parent Pledge exemplifies why LGBTQ+ representation cannot rest on one’s identity alone—especially when actively working against your community’s own safety. We need leaders who genuinely support equality, not those who align themselves with groups pushing harmful agendas under the guise of “parental rights.” Moms for Liberty has repeatedly promoted policies that threaten the safety and dignity of LGBTQ+ youth, undermine inclusive education, and drive harmful rhetoric into our schools and communities.
At Garden State Equality, we are committed to supporting candidates who will advance equality and stand up for the rights of every LGBTQ+ individual. Curtis Bashaw’s alignment with an organization known for targeting LGBTQ+ people only reaffirms that he does not meet our criteria for a pro-equality candidate. Representation must come with responsibility, and Bashaw’s decision to stand with Moms for Liberty speaks volumes about his priorities and values. Curtis has shown us who he aligns with, now it is our job to show him we know how to vote for our entire community’s best interests—against him.”
“I’m Curtis Bashaw. I say on the campaign, ‘Don’t put me in a box.’”
On why he’s a Republican
The idea of freedom, Bashaw emphasized, is why he leans to the right.
And his early life experiences as a young adult formed his opinion that there was intolerance in both political parties. Bashaw said his grandfather was a right-wing radio preacher in the 1960s and was on 600 stations. In 1976, his grandfather debated a gay clergyman. Bashaw’s grandfather did not think the “gay lifestyle” was in God’s plan, Bashaw said.
There were some followers of his grandfather “who were really strident and mean about that,” Bashaw said.
And as he figured out who he was as a gay man, Bashaw went to New York and had “peripheral involvement” with the gay-rights activist group Act Up. He then had an epiphany.
“It just dawned on me pretty quickly that neither party had a monopoly on tolerance. There was intolerance on both extremes. The gay people who felt marginalized, rightly so, started to think that every Christian person out there was hateful. And that’s just not true.
“And similarly, there are people I grew up with, some of them thought every gay person was a stereotype of hard-living promiscuity. And that’s just not true.”
That insight, Bashaw said, as a young man was very helpful in grounding him in “the miracle of our country’s founding values: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, general welfare, common defense, domestic tranquility.
“I guess my whole life I was always far less worried about being incarcerated by the Republicans as a gay person than I was at times about being bankrupted by some of the crazy policies of the Democrats, he said, adding that “I can’t believe we’re back talking about price controls.
“I’m Curtis Bashaw. I say on the campaign, ‘Don’t put me in a box.’”
A broad and roomy GOP tent
The reaction of most fellow Republicans to Bashaw’s running for Senate as a gay man was positive, Bashaw said. “And there’s other gay [GOP] candidates running this fall. There’s lots of different ethnicities.
“Get involved,” Bashaw said. “Come join in, and you’ll find that you don’t need to wear a badge or label to be there. It’s OK to be you.” At a recent town hall in Teaneck, two separate groups of people came up to Bashaw and said they just joined the Log Cabin Republicans and it was nice to meet him.
“So there’s affinity with me, because I am a gay Republican, from other people. And it’s been a very dynamic and energizing time in our party, in our state.”
“I think I’m going to be the guy that gets more done for New Jersey in the Senate.”
Why him and not Kim?
Bashaw believes the LGBTQ community should support him over Kim for a number of reasons.
“Andy Kim is quite partisan. He’s voted 100 percent of the time with Joe Biden. I think we need more bipartisanship.” Bashaw said Kim is far to the left of his party, a member of the progressive caucus. “I think he’s soft on the border; I think he’s soft on enterprise and business issues; and I think he’s soft on Israel. And so there’s a contrast there,” Bashaw said.
However, the biggest contrast, as Bashaw sees it, is that of a businessman versus a bureaucrat. “He’s never had to make a payroll his entire life. He has always worked for the government,” Bashaw said.
If members of the LGBTQ community have those issues as the priority, Bashaw said, they’re going to have an advocate caucusing with Republicans for them. “We all live in echo chambers. That’s not been useful, has it? We’re more divided because we’re living in echo chambers, so yeah, all Democrats are this, this, and this, and all Republicans are this, this, and this, and they’re shouting at each other. No. Let’s build some bridges.
“So I think I’m going to be the guy that gets more done for New Jersey in the Senate than Andy Kim.”
On transgender rights
There has been legislation in many parts of the country that would require schools to inform parents that a child is transgender. Many LGBTQ advocates believe it amounts to schools outing a child against their will, and that it will be dangerous to children of unsupportive parents at home. However, Bashaw believes that parents should be informed, made part of the process, and not be left in the dark. He said families with transgender children should have the freedom to make decisions on what’s best of them.
“I am not a fan of schools keeping secrets from parents about anything. You know, they’ve got to call a parent if they’re going to give a child an Advil.” If there is abuse at home because a child has a gender-identity issue, Bashaw said, there are safety net structures in place in New Jersey to help.
“We shouldn’t assume that all parents are not going to love their kid. I think that most parents are going to love their child,” he said. “Our country was based on giving citizens the benefit of the doubt. And that’s our jurisprudence — innocent until proven guilty. But often in a regulatory state, they make you guilty until proven innocent,” he said.
“I’m running my own race with my own ideas.”
On Project 2025
Bashaw dismissed Project 2025 as nothing more than Democratic talking points. “They’re trying to make it an issue. …It’s a think tank in Washington that wrote a paper. How many think tanks in Washington are there? There’s a lot.”
Project 2025 is a plan devised in part by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation to overhaul the federal government. Bashaw said he hasn’t read it but has heard the sound bites about it. He added that Trump has distanced himself from it.
“There’s lots of policy groups in Washington churning out all kinds of things. The Heritage Foundation may think that they’re trying to do the blueprint for the new administration, but I’m an independent voice. I’m running my own race with my own ideas, and I’m going to make what I think are the best decisions for the state of New Jersey when I get to the Senate.”
On why he decided to get involved
The acrimony in today’s politics and people’s exhaustion and sadness as a result are why Bashaw decided to run for office. New Jerseyans want to love their state and feel like they can build a future in it, Bashaw said, adding that they want to feel like their kids and grandkids can grow up in the state and not have to move away.
“I can be mad and stew all the time, or I can be a protagonist,” he said. “And, you know, our government is of the people, by the people, for the people. We depend on citizens to get involved. We are a self-governing nation.”
Bashaw decided that since he had a good career and did not have kids to “go through the muck of a political race in America in 2024,” he would throw his hat into the ring. “I just felt called to the mission to try to show that we could have a principled, pragmatic open-minded person who’s a businessperson and political outsider go to D.C. to bring people together to get things done.”
As for the acrimony, can it be remedied?
“Yes, I believe we can fix it; I absolutely believe we can fix it.”
