Using curl in a bash script - to post for auth token - weird behaviour?

Question

I am new to programming and scripting, so I am sorry if this is obvious. I have tried obtaining help elsewhere but can't seem to figure it out. I am creating a bash script that I get cron to execute every X mins to handle run state changes for a NVR security software package called 'ZoneMinder'. I currently have a cron job to use a binary called sunwait via a small script I wrote. Sunwait will wait until it is sunset or sunrise and then execute a command, so when it's sunset I have sunwait change Zoneminder from "DAY" to "NIGHT" state and vice-versa. Cron job is at 1AM and 1PM, so theres a 3-5+ hour window where the system could be rebooted for a backup or something and then the run state won't change. This isn't good because I have different 'zones' and sensitivities for DAY/NIGHT.This script will take care of all of that as it will be run every 5 or 10 mins and check things.

In order to login to the Zoneminder API to check the current run state. It instructs me to use curl to set a stateful connection and receive an auth token.

curl -XPOST -c cookies.txt -d "user=yourusername&pass=yourpassword&stateful=1" https://yourserver/zm/api/host/login.json

I have switched this command line into a bash script variable but it isn't working; it creates cookies.txt but it doesn't output the tokens. Instead it spits out a 401 Unauthorized error. If I take the curl command that I echo out from the script and execute it in terminal, it returns JSON data with the tokens and also creates cookies.txt, exactly as I need it to.

Here is a snippet of the code which is the curl part.

USER=<REDACTED>
PASSWD=<REDACTED>
CURL='/usr/bin/curl'
TOKE=/tmp/cookies.txt
CURL_ARGS="-XPOST -c $TOKE -d \"user=$USER_NAME&pass=$PASSWD&stateful=1\" -sS"
CURL_URL="https://<REDACTED>/zm/api/host/login.json"
get_token_file="$($CURL $CURL_ARGS $CURL_URL)"
cat $TOKE
echo "DEBUG - get_token_file  = $get_token_file"
echo "curl command= $CURL $CURL_ARGS $CURL_URL"

And here is the output of that snippet.

cat $TOKE --------->    
    # Netscape HTTP Cookie File
    # https://curl.haxx.se/docs/http-cookies.html
    # This file was generated by libcurl! Edit at your own risk.
    
    #HttpOnly_<REDACTED>    FALSE   /   FALSE   1613342747  ZMSESSID    <REDACTED>

echo "DEBUG - get_token_file = $get_token_file" ------->
    DEBUG - get_token_file  = {"success":false,"data":{"name":"Not Authenticated","message":"Not Authenticated","url":"\/zm\/api\/host\/login.json","exception":{"class":"UnauthorizedException","code":401,"message":"Not Authenticated"}}}

echo "curl command= $CURL $CURL_ARGS $CURL_URL" ------>
    curl command= /usr/bin/curl -XPOST -c /tmp/cookies.txt -d "user=<REDACTED>&pass=<REDACTED>&stateful=1" -sS https://<REDACTED>/zm/api/host/login.json

If I copy and paste the curl command /usr/bin/curl -XPOST -c /tmp/cookies.txt -d "user=<REDACTED>&pass=<REDACTED>&stateful=1" -sS https://<REDACTED>/zm/api/host/login.json it works as expected.

Here is the output from copy and pasting the echod out curl command. Why isn't this output to the $get_token_file variable?!

{"access_token":"<REDACTED>","access_token_expires":7200,"refresh_token":"<REDACTED>","refresh_token_expires":86400,"credentials":"auth=<REDACTED>","append_password":0,"version":"1.35.16","apiversion":"2.0"}

What am I missing here?

Thanks for any advice or insight!