Curtis Bashaw, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in New Jersey, raised a solid $1.2 million in the 3rd quarter of 2024 – and unlike in some prior fundraising quarters, most of that came from donors rather than from himself.
Bashaw, a hotel developer from Cape May, reported raising $947,000 from donors and political groups between July 1 and September 30, and he put in an extra $236,000 of his own money to supplement it. After spending $930,000 during the quarter (including $15,000 on Kellyanne Conway’s consulting firm), he went into the final month of the campaign with over $1.3 million still in his campaign account.
That’s certainly enough to run a respectable statewide campaign, though the prohibitive cost of the New York City and Philadelphia media markets means that Bashaw will be limited in his ability to advertise on television.
For comparison, Bashaw’s Democratic opponent, Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown), raised $2.4 million in the 3rd quarter and had nearly $4 million still on-hand at the beginning of the month.
Since launching his campaign at the beginning of this year, Bashaw has raised a total of nearly $4 million. A little over $2 million of that came from Bashaw’s own pockets, making him by far the biggest self-funder in New Jersey in this year’s elections – though he still doesn’t hold a candle to the 2018 GOP nominee for the same seat, Bob Hugin, who put an astonishing $36 million of his own money into his unsuccessful campaign to unseat then-Senator Bob Menendez.
Bashaw and Kim are now both competing to succeed Menendez, though due to Menendez’s resignation in August following his conviction on federal bribery charges, the man they’ll actually be succeeding is interim Senator George Helmy.
Kim is considered the favorite, owing both to his fundraising advantage and to the typical Democratic lean of New Jersey. But Bashaw, a moderate Republican, has repeatedly argued that the race is closer than it may appear at first; he and Kim met face-to-face tonight for their second of three debates in the campaign.