One of the top Republican strategists in the nation, Bill Stepien, has joined Curtis Bashaw’s campaign for a U.S. Senate seat in New Jersey.
The arrival of Stepien, who served as Donald Trump’s White House political director, to advise Bashaw is the latest signal that Democrats, still smarting from a divisive nomination fight and uncertainties surrounding President Joe Biden’s re-election, don’t have a clear lock on a Senate seat held for nearly nineteen years by indicted incumbent Bob Menendez.
“With the primary victory behind us, we’re excited to fine-tune and expand our team as we prepare to win in November,” said Bashaw campaign manager Angelo Lamberto. “As a Jersey guy with a proven track record of winning elections, Bill brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, and relationships as a campaign advisor that will help Curtis make history in November.”
Stepien managed both of Chris Christie’s gubernatorial campaigns and was a top strategist in Trump’s upset 2016 victory against Hillary Clinton; he managed Trump’s 2020 re-election bid.
Since then, Stepien founded a political consulting firm, National Public Affairs, that has assembled top-drawer clients attracted by using analytics and messaging to find paths to win tough races. His firm maintains a solid footprint in New Jersey.
Bashaw, a real estate developer and Cape May resort hotel owner, is a moderate Republican who beat Trump’s endorsed candidate in the GOP primary; Stepien’s role will likely assuage concerns about Bashaw from the Trump wing of the New Jersey Republican Party.
Two polls, one from a Republican super PAC and the other from a still unproven independent firm, show a relatively close race between Bashaw and Democrat Andy Kim (D-Moorestown), a three-term congressman and former Obama White House staffer, especially if Menendez stays in the race as an independent. Bashaw and Kim remain relatively unknown, but Kim has a substantial fundraising advantage in a state with 929,987 more Democrats than Republicans.
A jury sitting in federal court in Manhattan will begin deliberations on Menendez’ fate on Friday morning. If he is acquitted on bribery charges, or if the jury can’t produce a verdict – that’s what happened in another Menendez corruption trial in 2017 – a three-way race could create an unorthodox contest.
“It would be a fool’s errand to predict what the national races will look like in 72 hours, much less November, but as of this moment, Stepien’s role is one more indication that the GOP has expanded its map and is competing virtually everywhere across the country,” said Micah Rasmussen, the director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University.
New Jersey has not elected a Republican U.S. Senator since 1972; since then, 48 other states have done so, with only Hawaii Democrats on a hotter winning streak. The last time Republicans were in the mix for a Senate seat was in 2000, when Rep. Bob Franks (R-New Providence) was up against Jon Corzine; Stepien was a key member of that campaign team.
But despite New Jersey’s clear Democratic leanings, the two parties have each won seven of the last fourteen governor’s races.
Stepien’s presence in New Jersey Senate race creates another interesting twist: there is a significant overlap between Bashaw supporters who back Jack Ciattarelli for governor in next year’s race, but Stepien is a key strategist for a different candidate, NJ 101.5 radio host Bill Spadea. If anything, that shows New Jersey Republicans have compartmentalized 2024 and 2025 and have unified behind Bashaw.
A spokeswoman for the Kim campaign, Katey Sabo, used Stepien’s new role to tie Bashaw to Trump.
“There’s no doubt now that Donald Trump is pulling the strings on Curtis Bashaw’s campaign,” Sabo said. “New Jersey doesn’t want and can’t afford the Trump-Bashaw MAGA agenda, and they’ll reject it soundly this November.”
Kim, the overwhelming favorite, overpowered the state’s Democratic establishment to win the Senate nod. He built a solid grassroots organization that beat back a challenge from First Lady Tammy Murphy and then fielded and won a lawsuit that ended county organization lines in the Democratic primary this year – which earned him some critics in the Democratic Party.
“Many of us have concerns about Andy Kim’s ability to win the Senate seat,” Elizabeth Mayor Christian Bollwage said this week.
This story was updated at 10:13 PM with comment from the Kim campaign.