CAPE MAY – Curtis Bashaw settles in and contemplates a broad range of emotions that come from running a campaign for the U.S. Senate.
“Remember the ‘Wide, Wide World of Sports’?” he asked, referring to the sports program that aired on ABC for 36 years. “’The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat’?”
Bashaw said he felt those feelings, participating in conventions, the primary, and then the General Election. He said he never experienced anything like appearing at 12 events per day, getting to the train station at 6 a.m. and essentially going nonstop until 10 at night; doing this for 295 days straight, visiting all 21 counties in New Jersey and hitting each of its 565 municipalities; and then, precisely one month to the day after the vote, everything just stopped, in his word, “Boom.”
He described the experience of a statewide campaign as being like a military deployment, and he is heeding advice from a family member, a naval officer, who said you should not make any major decisions when you get home from a deployment. He said he was told it can take a month or two before you are settled back into the normal routine.
Bashaw said the sense of coming back to what is familiar is something he has always cherished.
“I’m a nester,” he said. “I’m also a traveler, but I love coming back to the same place.”
That is exactly how he describes what visitors to his Cape Resorts properties want, particularly Congress Hall, which Bashaw has managed for the past 22 years. He said people who have visited Congress Hall for a long time know that time wreaks havoc where they live, and wish for Congress Hall to be timeless.
“They want us not to change,” he said. “Changes ruin their memories, and their need for a constant.”
“We embraced that as a company; we want to change slowly. I think Cape May has also succeeded in that,” he added.
Bashaw said there have been a lot of changes in Cape May over the years, but it still feels like Cape May. He said his business aims to have people feel what he called “that warm nostalgia” when they come to Cape May and Congress Hall, something even he feels about the town.
“We as a community have to protect those things that are really important,” he said.
Bashaw reminisced about the miniature golf course at Jackson and Beach streets, which he called his “home course,” where he played when it opened in 1962. He said he would feel sad to see it go, but realistically that’s something you can’t ask for – that everything will always be there.
However, he feels the responsibility to care for the memories and traditions that are under his control, and any changes that need to be made should be done “with a light hand.”
Asked about his personal future with Cape Resorts, Bashaw said he can see his role shifting from managing partner into a variety of other roles, such as relating to programs and activities, helping other people understand how to run businesses or to help grow the economy.
“I’m excited to see the canvases that that leaves me,” he said.
Bashaw said one of the positive takeaways from the nearly year-long campaign was seeing how well-run the business was while he was engaged in so many things related to the campaign.
“It has been wonderful to reconnect with our team, and my family, of course. I’m just appreciative of what they accomplished while I was away. They really did a great job, and I’m proud of them,” he said.
Bashaw said that he can rely on his team to step up and do what needs to be done, and that has shown him he can carve out space to do things differently. He can still be a part of the community and of the facility that is woven into the fabric of so many people’s experiences, especially their Christmas and Fourth of July experiences; both holidays receive tremendous play at Congress Hall.
“I’m a worker, always have been,” Bashaw said. “I love to take on projects, whether civic, or in business, or educational. I have always enjoyed integrating my life.”
He said he sees himself doing a greater variety of things and team members stepping up and taking care of the day-to-day functions of the business, but he will not be packing up and moving to Florida or some other outpost as a senior citizen, he said.
Asked about his future in politics, Bashaw did not deny he would ever run again, but he said there is no elected office he is intent on pursuing. He is both proud and humbled by the fact that he received close to 1.8 million votes from people across New Jersey.
He said that despite coming up short, it was an amazing experience that he would never trade away. He said that, traveling around the state, he saw many new places and met many new friends, in places such as his home city of Cape May, attending the Freedom Caucus in Newark, getting off Route 50 and traveling alongside the Mullica River to meet with 35 fellow Republicans who were holding a barbecue in a barn.
Bashaw said he spoke, along with other candidates, at a rally in Warren County, and afterward a woman approached him and said, “You all spoke about border security, but none of you mentioned fentanyl.”
“I walked up to her, and she said, ‘I lost my daughter to fentanyl’ and started sobbing. It was silent from then out,” he said.
Bashaw said he will always remember the people who voiced their frustration at the candidates, but also the high level of respect from others who simply said, “Thanks for running.” All in all, he said, he came to love the country and state more for having been a candidate.
As he continues to get his land legs after his “deployment” in the Senate race, Bashaw is glad to be back home, celebrating the kickoff of the Winter Wonderland theme that has become such a part of Christmas in Cape May. Asked if he might invite his former opponent, Andy Kim, to Congress Hall, as he has done for U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, Bashaw said, “I already have.”
He said both he and Kim were committed to a civil campaign that focused on the issues, and they spoke about having a drink together when the race was over.
Bashaw summed up his campaign by saying it was the right thing to do at the right moment, that the state wanted change. He said, politically, he just wants to be helpful and supportive and see what opportunities arise.
Contact the reporter, Christopher South, at csouth@cmcherald.com or 609-886-8600, ext. 128.
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