Kim wins Senate race; Kean re-elected
Rep. Andy Kim, D-3, was elected to the U.S. Senate, defeating Republican businessman Curtis Bashaw for the seat that opened when Bob Menendez resigned this year after his federal conviction on bribery charges.
Kim, a three-term congressman from central New Jersey, becomes the first Korean-American in the Senate.
All the incumbents won re-election to Congress from New Jersey, including Rep. Tom Kean Jr., R-7, who defeated Democratic challenger Sue Altman.
With 93 percent of the votes counted, Kean had 52 percent compared with 46 percent for Altman.
Kean, who reached Congress by defeating Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski in 2022, won a second term in the sprawling district that spans the northwestern and central part of the state, with part reaching into New York suburbs in the east.
Democrats saw the contest as a possible pickup opportunity in part because the party had done well when former President Donald Trump was atop the ticket for Republicans.
In the 2018 midterm, they swept all but one House seat, including the 7th District. But during redistricting after the latest census, the district changed to include more GOP-leaning towns.
Altman, a former professional basketball player, previously led the progressive Working Families Alliance.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-5, was re-elected to Congress with 55 percent of the vote compared with 43 percent for Republican Mary Jo Guinchard, with 93 percent of the vote counted.
Gottheimer, a lawyer and former speechwriter for Bill Clinton, first was elected in 2016 when he defeated longtime incumbent Scott Garrett, a Republican.
Democrat Nellie Pou won the seat vacated by longtime Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., who died earlier this year. She defeated Republican Billy Prempeh and two others. She is a longtime state legislator, serving in the Assembly from 1997 to 2011, then the Senate.
In the 10th District, which includes parts of Newark and Jersey City, Rep. LaMonica McIver, a Democrat, was re-elected to a full two-year term. She won a special election in September to fill the final months of the seat Democratic Rep. Donald Payne Jr. held before he died in May. McIver is the second Black woman to represent New Jersey in Congress, along with current Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman.
Presidential race
Trump was elected the 47th U.S. president, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who refused to accept defeat four years ago, sparked a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, was convicted of felony charges, and survived one assassination attempt while another one was foiled.
With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. He won Michigan on Wednesday afternoon, Nov. 6, sweeping the “blue wall” along with Pennsylvania - the one-time Democrat-leaning, swing states that all went for Trump in 2016 before flipping to President Joe Biden in 2020.
His Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, called Trump on Wednesday afternoon to concede the race and congratulate him. A short time later, Biden also called Trump to congratulate him and to invite the president-elect to the White House, formally kicking off the transition ahead of Inauguration Day, the White House said.
The victory validates Trump’s bare-knuckles approach to politics. He had attacked Harris in deeply personal - often misogynistic and racist - terms as he pushed an apocalyptic picture of a country overrun by violent migrants. The coarse rhetoric, paired with an image of hypermasculinity, resonated with angry voters - particularly men - in a deeply polarized nation.
“I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president,” Trump told throngs of cheering supporters in Florida even before his victory was confirmed.
In state after state, Trump outperformed what he did in the 2020 election while Harris failed to do as well as Biden did in winning the presidency four years ago.
Upon taking office again, Trump will work with a Senate that will now be in Republican hands, while control of the House hadn’t been determined.
“We’ve been through so much together, and today you showed up in record numbers to deliver a victory,” Trump said. “This was something special and we’re going to pay you back,” he said.
The results cap a historically tumultuous and competitive election season that included a shift to a new Democratic nominee just a month before the party’s convention.
Trump will inherit a range of challenges when he assumes office Jan. 20, including heightened political polarization and global crises that are testing America’s influence abroad.
His win against Harris, the first woman of color to lead a major party ticket, marks the second time he has defeated a female rival in a general election.
Harris rose to the top of the ticket after Biden exited the race amid alarm about his advanced age. Despite an initial surge of energy around her campaign, she struggled during a compressed timeline to convince disillusioned voters that she represented a break from an unpopular administration.
Harris did win the 14 electoral votes of New Jersey, continuing Democrats’ dominance in the state, which has gone with the Democratic candidate for president in every election since 1988.
Democrats have nearly 1 million more registered voters than Republicans in the state.
Trump has ties to New Jersey, including golf clubs across the state. He also operated casinos in the shore resort of Atlantic City, but they ended in bankruptcy.
Immigrant parents
In a recent interview, Kim said that accomplishment would validate his parents’ decision 50 years ago to immigrate to the United States.
He is a former Obama administration national security aide, a Rhodes Scholar and has a doctorate from Oxford. He’s presented himself as an unassuming, hard-working official and gained national attention in 2021 when he was spotted cleaning up the U.S. Capitol after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, bagging trash.
“It pains me to my core to see the struggle we are going through,” Kim told supporters in a hotel ballroom after his victory. “The very foundation of our democracy is rendered fragile. We are at a moment of profound anxiety about what comes next for our country.”
He challenged people to see the upcoming 250th anniversary of America’s independence as “a reminder that the greatness of America is not what we take from this country but what we give back.”
“Let us use that extraordinary milestone as a moment of healing,” he said.
Kim’s victory keeps a reliably Democratic seat under his party’s control.
He is expected to take the seat sooner than January because of Menendez’s resignation. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy has said George Helmy, who is serving the remainder of Menendez’s term, will step down and the winner of Tuesday’s election would be appointed.
Kim, 42, was first elected to Congress in 2018 by defeating Republican Tom MacArthur, a Trump ally. He became the state’s first Asian-American to be elected to Congress.
During the Senate campaign, Kim said he would oppose tax breaks for the wealthy and support abortion rights.
Bashaw personally financed his campaign with at least $1 million, according to Federal Election Commission records. He gained the GOP nomination in June when he defeated a Trump-backed rival.
A first-time candidate, he’s served on several boards including for Stockton University and a state tourism panel.
The Senate race began chaotically for Democrats. The party, which controls the Legislature and the governorship, found itself with an incumbent senator facing a second federal corruption trial.
Menendez was convicted on bribery charges that he traded his office for cash, gold cars and a luxury car, and has resigned. But he’s denied the charges - as he did in his earlier trial, which ended in a hung jury.
This time, though, Democrats abandoned him. Kim launched his own race in defiance and rejection of Menendez the day after his indictment last fall.
But it wasn’t an easy path to the nomination. First lady Tammy Murphy launched a campaign that was well-funded and widely backed by insiders.
Kim upended politics in New Jersey when he sued in federal court to stop a practice whereby party leaders were allowed to influence how ballots are drawn up, widely seen as helping preferred candidates. The judge, in an initial ruling, sided with Kim. Murphy dropped out and Kim won easily in June.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.