RANDOLPH – A poll that just came out showed Andy Kim with a double-digit lead over Republican Curtis Bashaw.

On Sunday, as he visited this Morris County town, Bashaw kind of dismissed the poll, saying his ads have not gone up yet and that Kim’s support in the poll was just barely above 50 percent.

In other words, Bashaw has a path to victory.

In one of those oddities of politics, Kim on Monday visited the same locale as Bashaw did a day before – Freedom Park for a rally of his own.

He said he liked that the poll showed his name recognition has risen statewide.

But like many candidates before him, Kim said no poll is going to deter his efforts between now and next Tuesday.

“I’m not going to take my foot off the gas,” he said.

If you are wondering why the state’s two Senate candidates came to Randolph a day apart from each other, it is because the township has a competitive and locally meaningful municipal election this year. Four seats are up and if Democrats win all four, they will take control of the council.

Bashaw was on hand Sunday to launch a canvassing effort.

Kim and Rep. Mikie Sherrill visited Monday to basically do the same thing.

The political careers of Kim and Sherrill will always be linked. Both were elected to Congress in 2018 when Democrats won four Republican-held seats in New Jersey. Since then, Republicans have won one seat back – Tom Kean Jr. in CD-7 – and Jeff Van Drew became a Republican.

Still, it was the excitement of 2018 – the midterms after Donald Trump’s election – that Kim wanted to recapture.

“It feels like 2018, right?” he said. “Just this incredible surge of energy that is there – that was able to power things that people never thought was possible.”

With that in mind, Kim said he thinks – and hopes – that “surge” will help Sue Altman over the finish line in CD-7, which lies just west of Randolph. She and Kean are locked in a race that polls say is tight. A cautionary note is that there have been very few public polls.

Sherrill spoke, and without saying it directly, suggested that Trump and his cohorts represent something other than the interests of average Americans.

Not so Democrats. Or as she put it:

“We serve the United States of America. We serve the people of New Jersey. We serve the people of the 11th Congressional District and the people of Randolph. That’s who we serve.”