The firestorm over embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh brings into sharp relief the strategic challenges facing Bob Hugin, the Republican running for the U.S. Senate in a state that is largely hostile to President Donald Trump.

Kavanaugh was already an unpopular pick in New Jersey before allegations of sexual assault disrupted his path to the court and became another flashpoint in the nation's reckoning over sexual assault.

That makes Kavanaugh and the sexual assault claim another episode in the increasing Trump world of scandals, putting pressure on Hugin trying to keep an arm's distance from Trump as he makes his first bid for public office.

If Hugin, a former pharmaceutical company executive, is to have any chance of beating incumbent Sen. Bob Menendez, he needs a strong turnout from New Jersey's shrinking GOP base, especially in Ocean, Morris and Monmouth counties, which Trump carried by a combined 132,000 votes against Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. Hugin cannot afford to alienate those voters.

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Yet, there are simply not enough of them to carry Hugin to victory. This is a general election race in New Jersey, where races are decided largely by the vast unaffiliated and moderate middle – a terrain increasingly becoming more blue. New Jersey Democrats now have a 900,000-voter advantage, which includes a base roiled by "the resistance" determined to seat a defiant class of Democrats in Congress.

That resistance base include millennials, union members, environmentalists and, perhaps most significantly, women inspired by the #MeToo movement and infuriated by a sense that Trump was never held accountable for his own history of sexual misconduct.

Hugin, a Princeton University graduate who served in the Marines, needs to attract a share of these voters, too. That helps explain how he surfed the Kavanaugh tsunami over the weekend.

Hugin first took a neutral, wait-and-see position on Kavanaugh when Trump nominated him in July. But by the end of last week, as confirmation appeared all but certain, Hugin indicated that he, too, was on board. He had joined the Republican fold that seemed to exhale after Kavanaugh's bitter confirmation hearing.

“I haven’t heard anything” that says that “I wouldn’t vote for him, today,'' Hugin told veteran WPIX New York newsman Marvin Scott in an interview taped Friday but broadcast on Sunday. "I think he will be approved.”

But Hugin quickly jumped to the sidelines after Christine Blasey Ford, a research psychologist in Northern California, told the Washington Post that Kavanuagh sexually assaulted her at a social gathering in the early 1980s when they were teenagers.

Ford first detailed the allegations in a letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who kept the letter secret until last week. Kavanaugh has categorically denied the allegations; both are scheduled to testify before the committee next Monday.

By late Sunday, Hugin released a statement on Twitter calling for the matter to be "fully investigated."

Brigid Harrison, a political analyst at Montclair State University, said Hugin had little choice.

"He had to say something that would placate women voters in particular and more generally to male and female voters who are concerned about sexual harassment and how people conduct themselves in the workplace and in private relationships,'' she said.

A Quinnipiac University poll of the race conducted almost a month ago illustrated the need for Hugin to quickly weigh in. It said Menendez maintained a 10-point advantage with female voters.

Hugin's campaign asserted that Hugin was "one of the first Republicans in the country" to take such a stand. In doing so, Hugin was also demonstrating his independence from the GOP's almost slavish devotion to Trump world.

Hugin has aggressively tried to paint himself as an independent-minded Republican, who will buck Trump when he disagrees and support him when his policies benefit New Jersey constituents. But undermining that pitch are Hugin's past Trump ties – the contributions to his campaign, his service as a Trump delegate to the Republican National Convention in 2016, the more than $100,000 from a Trump-aligned super PAC.

As Hugin moved to distance himself from Kavanaugh, Menendez's 'campaign sought to join the two at the hip. In a news release Monday, Menendez's campaign circulated a clip of his interview with Scott, and said Kavanaugh's appointment would threaten to erase "decades of progress" on civil and women's rights and overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that legalized abortion.

Emails disclosed during the confirmation hearings revealed that as a lawyer during the George W. Bush administration, Kavanaugh advised against describing Roe v. Wade as "settled law of the land."

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Kavanaugh testified that he was only reflecting the views of other scholars and said he personally viewed the ruling as a settled Supreme Court precedent. His response did not assuage Democrats' concerns, but it apparently was enough to satisfy Hugin, who is pro-choice.

Hugin campaign spokesman Nick Iacovella said the candidate "is confident that Judge Kavanaugh's public statements during his confirmation hearings that Roe v. Wade is settled law would not impede the rights of women to make their own medical decisions if he were confirmed to the Supreme Court."

The Kavanaugh furor won't be settled for another week, and possibly longer. There will be plenty of shock waves for Hugin to surf.