Fulop seeks to make Jersey City 'best mid-size city' in the nation

By Terrence T. McDonald/The Jersey Journal
May 06, 2013 at 12:23 PM

The Jersey City mayoral race has four candidates, but political observers are only interested in two: incumbent Mayor Jerramiah Healy and Ward E City Councilman Steve Fulop.

The two men have been adversaries ever since Fulop, a U.S. Marine and one of the youngest individuals ever elected to the nine-member council, first joined the body in 2005 after defeating one of Healy?s running mates.

Since then, Fulop, 36, has built up considerable local celebrity, especially (opponents say only) in the city?s Downtown by casting himself as a political reformer bent on destroying the city?s entrenched political establishment. The incumbent he defeated in 2005 has since endorsed him for mayor.

He has long wanted Healy?s job.

In recent public appearances, Fulop has said the city is at a ?crossroads.?

?Our goal is not to be a better Jersey City than the Jersey City of Mayor Healy,? he said during a sit-down with editors of The Jersey Journal last month, repeating verbatim a line he has used frequently elsewhere. ?There is a route for Jersey City to be the best mid-size city in the United States of America.?

Fulop grew up in Edison, the grandson of Holocaust survivors. His parents own and operate a Newark bodega.

He is a graduate of the State University of New York at Binghamton who went on to receive a master?s degree in public administration from Columbia and a master?s in business administration from New York University before becoming a Wall Street trader.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Fulop enlisted in the U.S. Marines, becoming part of the 6th Engineer Support Battalion. He was deployed in 2004 and was honorably discharged about three years ago.

His military service features prominently in his campaign literature, with fliers containing photos of the councilman in full military gear.

An Essex Street resident, Fulop once headed the Historic Paulus Hook Association. In 2004, and with the backing of the late former mayor Glenn D. Cunningham, he made a Quixotic bid to unseat then-Rep. Bob Menendez. Fulop won 14 percent of the vote that year.

He was more successful in 2005, running for the Ward E council seat against Healy ally E. Junior Maldonado. Fulop stunned Jersey City by defeating Maldonado, who was one of only two Healy running mates to lose that year. Maldonado is now a Fulop supporter.

The councilman spent much of his initial years on the council as the lone opponent to Healy administration initiatives. Meanwhile, Fulop championed ethics issues that the council responded to with hostility.

At least one council member around this time changed her seat on the council dais to stay away from him. The council adopted an ordinance intended to keep Fulop from continually introducing measures embarrassing to the administration (only Fulop voted ?no? on that ordinance).

He flirted with running for mayor in the 2009 race, but opted out and ran for re-election to his council seat instead. In a five-candidate race, he trounced the opposition, winning 63 percent of the vote. The runner-up went to prison two months later, one of dozens of pols arrested in the massive corruption sweep that ensnared numerous Healy allies.

Fulop, who four years earlier had expressed hope about working with Healy, crowed after his 2009 landslide: "It speaks to the fact that people responded to a reasonable voice on the council for open government on the council.?

Since 2011, Fulop has earned enough allies on the council to give him a majority, winning the support of two recent additions to the body and two former Healy loyalists. Ethics measures that went down in flames when he first joined the council have been approved, some unanimously, while he has the power to block administrative initiatives if he so wishes.

But as the councilman?s power over city government has increased, so have the attacks on his views and his character. Healy allies say Fulop is a hypocrite who espouses the virtue of ?pay to play? bans while using the Board of Education ? Fulop helped eight of the nine members get elected ? to enrich his donors and friends.

The Board of Education has been Fulop?s Achilles heel of this election season. He is intensely involved in the public-school district ? hundreds of emails the Healy campaign had hoped would prove he steered school contracts to his allies instead showed Fulop intervening on issues as mundane as adults loitering on school property.

Fulop also backed an effort to oust former schools superintendent Charles T. Epps Jr. in favor of former Delaware superintendent Marcia V. Lyles, who became Jersey City?s schools chief last year. The move, especially the BOE?s decision to hire from outside the district instead of promoting a popular associate superintendent, cost Fulop some support. At times, the utterance of his name at a BOE meeting is enough to result in a cascade of boos from the crowd.

?I have probably paid the price politically for it,? Fulop said recently to The Jersey Journal of his dealings with the school district. ?But I?m proud of what I did because I did the right thing by residents.?

The Healy campaign has used Fulop?s involvement in the school district as the lynchpin for its campaign against the councilman. A television commercial featuring ominous music and campaign fliers with unflattering photos of Fulop warn voters about Fulop?s plans for the schools.

The local teachers union, which has backed Healy, has told its members that if Fulop is election, public schools will be privatized. Fulop says this is untrue, while noting that Healy?s policy on charter schools is the same as Fulop?s (they both support charter schools).

Healy?s campaign lobs negative attacks at Fulop because the mayor has ?no record to run on,? the councilman said.

?On taxes, (he?s) a failure,? he said. ?On education, he?s been non-involved ? on corruption, he?s been a failure.?

The campaign Fulop has waged against Healy has been the most aggressive the mayor has faced since 2004, perhaps ever. Last year, political observers thought Fulop was a shoo-in, but Healy?s initially sleepy campaign hit the gas pedal in the last quarter of 2012.

In March Healy?s allies believed they turned things around completely when President Obama waded into the race and endorsed Healy, an early Obama supporter. As the campaign heads into its final week, it?s difficult to find Healy campaign literature that doesn?t feature Obama?s picture.

The president?s endorsement led to panic among Fulop supporters, and Fulop himself conceded in April that Obama?s nod had had a negative impact on his fundraising.

The councilman?s supporters have since regained a bit more optimism, and Fulop?s decision to shift some focus to the 2009 corruption swept has helped. Healy was never charged in the sting, but his deputy mayor, two council allies and other members of city government were, and Healy himself was caught on tape meeting with disgraced developer Solomon Dwek, the confidential information who helped the feds nab corrupt pols throughout the state.

When speaking to The Jersey Journal in early April, Fulop said he ?hoped? his campaign wouldn?t address the corruption sweep, but soon after Healy?s campaign mailed out a flier going negative on Fulop, a television commercial using footage of Healy?s meeting with Dwek went on the air, followed by another commercial and several campaign fliers.

Fulop?s campaign insists the focus on corruption has hurt Healy?s poll numbers, and at a May 2 debate at School 4, Fulop defended going negative by noting that Healy was the first to release negative campaign literature.

?Not even one mailer that has come from the mayor?s office has one thing about my vision for Jersey City,? Fulop said. ?Each has my image distorted and a picture of President Obama on the other side.?

The election is Tuesday, May 14.

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