Tonight, we're hosting a live conversation with the two leading U.S. Senate candidates, Democrat Andy Kim and Republican Curtis Bashaw.

They're vying for former Senator Bob Menendez's seat.

A year ago, that seat was barely in play.

With Menendez poised to easily win a fourth term in office.

But that all changed when he was indicted on federal bribery and corruption charges, setting off a chain reaction that rocked the state's political arena, bringing about lasting consequences and intra party rivals.

Senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan reminds us how we got here.

The race for Jersey Senate seat between Congressman Andy Kim and challenger Curtis Bashaw started with a stunning indictment.

Bob Menendez and his wife Nadine, charged with bribery and corruption.

Call it the first political domino to fall.

The senator and his wife accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for Senator Menendez using his power and influence.

The scandal, with lurid images of gold bars and bags of cash, rocked new Jersey and the nation on September 22nd.

But Menendez angrily refused to resign.

Jarring the second domino into motion.

Just one day later, Andy Kim announced his run for Senate.

It hit like a thunderclap, sending shockwaves through the Democratic Party.

Those are the paradigm shifts that we saw this year.

We saw, you know, Bob Menendez started the whole set of dominoes off with his legal problems and eventually his indictments and his conviction, and then the power vacuum that was left by, the race to replace him.

Writers Michael Rasmussen says the power struggle over who should lead the campaign to replace Menendez roiled new Jersey Democrats.

Tensions soared in mid-November when First Lady Tammy Murphy, the governor's wife, entered the race.

I'm running for the United States Senate.

Murphy rolled out a standard campaign well-financed, backed by party bosses, the usual playbook that would crank up powerful political machines to get out the vote for their endorsed candidate.

At the top of Jersey's singular party line primary ballot.

We will pick Tammy Murphy and we will anoint her and we will give her the preferential ballot position, and that'll be that.

Well, it's not the way it worked out because, Andy Kim saw that he was going to be buried by this old system.

And so he challenged it.

He took the parties to court, and he took the county clerk's to court.

Against the backdrop of this high stakes courtroom battle, Kim and Murphy slugged it out for each county's preferential party line, tearing Democrats apart as a grassroots revolt gained momentum.

Finally, in late March, without a guarantee of that county line, Murphy called it quits.

My path to winning the Senate race was crystal clear.

Once I realized what a bloody, expensive and just divisive path I was going to have to go down, I then realized, okay, it's got to be now.

That cleared a path for Kim, who won not just the primary, but also the court ballot battle, a watershed moment that's radically reformed and reshaped Jersey's entire political landscape topples the system with him, and in the process, I think, becomes the most consequential politician of our time in New Jersey.

Curtis Bashaw also confronted party regulars in a self-financed primary campaign.

The political newcomer bested the Republicans.

Trump endorsed candidate Christine Serrano Glassner, the Cape May hotelier who says he will vote for Donald Trump, is viewed as an unlikely moderate in his party's MAGA lineup.

I'm proud during this month of pride to be the first openly gay, person running for the Republican, seat in the Senate.

And we're going to take our campaign and our message as a political outsider to all voters of New Jersey.

And we're in this to win it for them.

In fact, Kim and Bashaw won their primaries handily, setting up a Senate race that no one could have foreseen before September 22nd.

And so it's been one domino after another, that has just resulted in monumental changes and some nasty scars.

Menendez finally resigned, and Governor Murphy opted to appoint his loyal former chief of staff, George Helmy, as placeholder instead of Kim.

Murphy wants Kim to ask for his support, saying, if he called me right now and asked me for my endorsement, I'd give it to him, which shows that in new Jersey, some things never change.

I'm Brenda Flanagan NJ Spotlight News.