Issue 204: A very big issue

Includes: election analysis, some very big changes afoot!!! Plus, ICYMI and other stuff.

Hello! Well, this is an especially intense issue for me at least, and one that wasn’t easy to write. We start off with a little election news, but then I have a huge announcement about the future of the newsletter (also, erm, my future!). Enjoy your weekend, and until next week! — Amy

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Election analysis, part one of many

Hey, did anything happen this week?

Oh right — the nonstop, never-ending, primary-from-hell finally wound down. I’m not going to get into the Assembly races for now (results for Assembly and Sheriff are here), but this week I just want to focus on what-in-gods-name-happened in the governor’s primary. For me, personally, I’m still struggling to get my brain around it.

From NYTimes.com. I’m seriously considering getting the map on the right tattooed on my body somewhere because MY GOD.

Ok, it comes as a surprise to absolutely no one who is a regular reader of this newsletter that I am positively delighted by the results of this election. I was resigned long ago to the fact that Sherrill would win it, and I think that she will do well in the general — so I’m happy to see her in a solid first place win, which I hope will reflect her having strong support going into November. Then, there’s the fact that Ras Baraka, who I’d feared would come in 5th or 6th, instead shocked the entire state by coming in second. Incredible.

And when it comes to Steve Fulop coming in third? Look, I don’t want to be a jerk about this. It is what it is, and I don’t need to rub it in. But I do want to unpack it a bit, and talk about what happened, because I think it’s going to be relevant to our upcoming mayoral election.

Let’s start with:

So what happens to Fulop now?

Well, we don’t know. This was an especially crushing blow any way you look at it, but I don’t think it necessarily means that his political career is completely over. He has great local name recognition and he’s relatively popular in Ward E, at a minimum (see below); he’s proven he can fundraise and, previous to this round, has won several elections. So here’s what I think his options are.

Option 1: he could just leave politics and go to the private sector. Honestly, I think this sounds great. He’s about my age, so he’s got easily 15-20 working years ahead of him, and I’m sure many companies would jump to hire him. I’m sure he could make a ton of money doing this, and he could also live in NJ or RI or wherever he wanted to go. Come on, do this — it’s a great option.

Option 2: he could run for mayor again. Ok, I don’t think this is likely to happen, but it could happen. I mean, he won three terms — he knows how to do it. I honestly think there’s a decent chance that he’d win. I’ve been saying this is a real possibility for at least two years (and for two years everyone in JC politics has said I was nuts, yet all of a sudden it’s a hot rumor now), and I think it still remains one. Very much an outside chance, but it still exists.

Option 3: he runs for County Executive against Craig Guy. I could see this making sense to him. Guy hasn’t exactly made tons of friends among the general voting public, and I think he’s vulnerable. I think this remains, despite what happened on Tuesday, a reasonably winnable race for Fulop — definitely not a slam dunk, not an easy win, but it’s possible.

Option 4: he runs for Congress, against Rob Menendez. I mean, I guess? I think there’s even more challenges for him with that than with County Exec, but if he got James Solomon on his side (a big if, but it could happen — and would help immensely with either this option or #3), a lot of those problems go away.

But to understand more what I’m talking about with that, let’s go on to:

So WTF happened?

Let’s talk about what happened statewide some other time. I want to focus on Jersey City today.

Here is a map from the Twitter account NJ Map Guy that I added an edit of my own (here’s a link to the original):

The edit I added was those green dots in Ward B, because as of now (I’m writing this on Friday at 7:30pm), there are only four votes that separate Fulop and Baraka in that area. Meaning, Baraka won Wards A, F, and very nearly won B (and may or may not go on to win Ward B, depending on what happens with provisional and VBM votes that are still trickling in). Citywide, there are currently fewer than 500 votes separating the two candidates. Fulop did ok in Ward E¹, and pretty much terrible everywhere else in the city.

This is wild. I never in a million years would have predicted this would happen. I expected him to win JC overwhelmingly, as did pretty much everyone else.

So, why did he do so poorly in JC? Here are some thoughts.

• He ran for governor for two years, meaning he’s basically been out of town for much of that time. So many people I talked to in that time, including people who had previously been fans of his, were not thrilled by this fact. It created a lot of resentment within the city.

• Into the vacuum created by his absence stepped Ras Baraka, a candidate who in many ways is the polar opposite of Fulop. Empathetic, warm, passionate about social justice — in many ways, Baraka represented all of Fulop’s personal deficiencies rolled up into one and then countered with a strong rebuttal. Fulop has long struggled with Black voters especially; to have a competitor who very specifically spoke to their concerns was especially powerful.

• It was hard, as a resident of the city, to see Fulop bragging on the campaign trail about his accomplishments as mayor, many of which were based on things that were deeply controversial within the city (development vs gentrification, etc) or that seemed contradictory to our lived experience (he billed himself as the transit candidate when JC has lost public transportation under his tenure). Again, I think this fed resentment, which in turn pushed local people to vote against him, as much as they were voting for someone else.

• His campaign relied a lot on online volunteers, and a lot of those people were… well, obnoxious. If you posted/tweeted/etc anything even mildly critical of Fulop over the last few months — even within the context of purely talking to other JC people — you likely had one of several Fulop Superfans (nearly all of whom don’t live in the city) jump into your conversation and correct you on just how wrong you were. People, have we learned nothing from the “Bernie Bros” of yore? It’s one thing to defend your candidate; it’s another to alienate and piss off voters who just feel differently, and fire up the opposition. I don’t think these folks cost him a ton of votes, but they didn’t help him either.

• Fulop made complex policy statements the cornerstone of his campaign and I don’t think most voters care about the minutiae of policy? I mean look, when I say “Fix NJ Transit,” I don’t mean “give me ten paragraphs about how you’re going to do it.” I mean: get to work, and then let me know when it’s fixed so that I can be happy. This isn’t me shirking my responsibility as a citizen. I have no idea how to fix NJ Transit — it is not my job to know how to do it; doing it would take education and experience I don’t have. So I genuinely have no idea when I look at someone’s list of how they’re going to fix it whether or not it’s a good list or not. Also, I have my own job and life to worry about — this is exactly why I want to elect someone who can take care of that stuff for me, so that I don’t have to know all the details that go into getting it done. I appreciate the idea behind having policy statements and bullet points to explain to voters exactly how you plan to do things (although in reality, would any of those hold up?), but I just don’t know if it matters to most voters.

• He insisted on doing everything in his campaign himself (at least, this is how it appeared on the outside. Maybe I’m wrong and there was more going on behind the scenes, but it sure looked like he was running the entire thing himself). That’s not going to work. No one person is good at everything, especially when it comes to a complex operation like a campaign.

I remain totally shocked that the local side of the campaign turned out like this, just, if nothing else, based on name recognition. I expected Sherrill to win statewide but Fulop to come in second (maybe with Baraka closely behind) and in JC for Fulop to sweep. Well, at least I got the Sherrill part right… but everything else, I’m still processing it because I never even had the door open that Fulop might be in for a fight locally.

I’m going to have plenty more to say about all of this in the coming weeks. For now, let’s just say that if I were James Solomon, here’s how I’d be feeling right now.

To have gone from an outsider (and sometimes stated enemy) of a once popular mayor and also county organization to endorsing the winner in the Assembly race and presiding over the Ward that may determine that mayor’s political fate… wow. He’s got to be happy he’s in the situation he’s in now. He’ll have a lot of landmines to navigate soon enough, but for now he’s got to feel like he’s on top of the world. But just remember, not too long ago (erm, as in a week ago?) it seemed like Fulop was unstoppable too. Things can turn around on you pretty quickly, and nothing is ever set in stone.

If I were placing a bet on a candidate for the election (purely on the candidate that I think will win, not necessarily who I’d like to win), I’d put my money on Solomon — although to be fair, nothing in that respect has really changed this week (he’s been the favorite for some time, at least in my mind). But could the HCDO take the results of last week as a wake up call that they need to get their act together and really push McGreevey, for fear if they don’t that they’re really done for once and for all? Will O’Dea step out of Fulop’s shadow and feel emboldened by the results? None of us knows just now. But so seismic were the results of last week’s election, a lot is now in flux. We’ll have to see how things shake out.

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Some personal news! Followed by some newsletter news!

Maybe you’ve heard a rumor around town, or maybe you’ve picked up on some of the teeny tiny hints I’ve dropped but…

I’ve got great news! And also terrible news! And it is the same news!

I’m leaving Jersey City. It’s true — and I can hardly believe it myself. After 20 years at the same job, it’s time for me to move on. About seven weeks ago, I was offered a great new position at a midwestern university and I enthusiastically accepted. I’m super excited to be moving on to a new opportunity, and this is something that I’ve really wanted and needed to do for quite a long time. (My old job asked me to hold off on making an announcement for a bit, but now I can do it, so here we are.)

But of course, it’s bittersweet. Jersey City has been my home since 1997, and I’ll miss it so much. For now, we’re holding onto our condo here for at least several months (hey this could be a midlife crisis/perimenopause that’s motivating this drastic life change — good to have a backup plan), and I don’t plan on being a stranger. But realistically, starting in August I will be mostly living somewhere else.

So then the question becomes: what happens to the newsletter? And I’m really excited to tell you about that.

When I told my neighbors Katie Jennings and David Giambusso my good news a couple of weeks ago, I tossed in a joke about “you guys want to take over a certain newsletter?” I was absolutely thrilled when they said, “actually… can we talk about this more?” Katie and David both live in Ward B right near Lincoln Park where they’re raising their daughter, and — this is the most exciting part to me, personally — they’re both real reporters!!!

One of the things I’ve struggled with as I’ve written this newsletter is that I am not a real reporter, at all. But they are, meaning they bring skills and connections to this that I don’t have, and I think they can really help take this project to the next level. David is the senior editor of Gothamist/WNYC, formerly at the Star-Ledger; the two met at Politico (Katie covered Christie’s last term and Murphy’s first); Katie was later a reporter at Forbes. I asked them to write some bios to introduce themselves, and here they are (I swear I did not ask them to write nice things about me):

Hi! I’m Katie Jennings, Jersey Girl born and raised. I’ve been a proud Jersey City resident since 2019. I’m a former New Jersey Statehouse reporter for Politico, which is where I met my now husband David Giambusso and also Amy Wilson, by way of her famous Menendez patches. I moved to Belgium and was a reporter for Politico in Brussels and later a reporter and union shop steward at Forbes magazine before joining a NYC-based budget think tank.

I first moved to downtown Jersey City in 2019, and, a couple years later, we moved to the West Side thanks to Amy Wilson’s relentless advocacy for the awesomeness of living next to Lincoln Park. She was right! We love our neighborhood and community. You can usually find us in the park with our 3  year old daughter or grabbing a slice (or a cookie or tiramisu) at Pompei Pizza.

We are gutted that Amy Wilson is leaving Jersey City, but she’s shown us how important it is to build community and we are thrilled to be continuing her legacy.

And,

I’m David Giambusso and I’ve been a proud Jersey City resident for 15 years. I‘ve lived Downtown, in the Heights and now on the Best Side/West Side where Katie and I bought a house a few years ago. My first big journalism gig was working for the newspaper formerly known as The Star-Ledger where I was incredibly lucky to learn alongside some of the best reporters and editors in the state. I covered Newark City Hall when the Ledger was still in Newark. I followed former Mayor Cory Booker, then-Councilmembers Ras Baraka and Donald Payne Jr. (RIP), “Big Steve” Adubato as well as the occasional Jersey City issue, which is where I first discovered the great Amy Wilson. 

When the Ledger left Newark, I left the Ledger for a job covering policy at Politico New York. I eventually became the editor of that bureau and in 2021 moved to Gothamist and WNYC where I’m a senior editor now.

I believe local news is crucial for a free society and creates a community for people interested and affected by shared local issues. That’s a big reason why Katie and I are taking on Amy’s vital newsletter, also because we would do anything Amy asked us.

(*Note: David wanted me to mention that he won’t be covering any newsletter coverage that overlaps with his current position at Gothamist.)

Me and David looking for Jimmy Hoffa’s remains under the 1 & 9 a few years ago. You may remember Katie and David from the issue where we went looking for his body back in 2021.

I am really grateful to the two of them for stepping up and carrying this project on — even more, taking it to places I couldn’t. I think they’re going to do an amazing job and can really grow this newsletter into something major. Jersey City so desperately needs more people covering the news, and I think Katie and David are perfect to jump in and help on that front. Several other local folks I’ve talked to have expressed interest in also being involved, and I’m really hoping that Neighborhood Character can now grow.

Me and Katie. To be clear, we did not find Jimmy.

You’re not totally done with me, though. I’m going to continue to contribute to the newsletter at least through the November election. We’re just going to divide up the duties. Starting next week, we’re going to have an interview led by Katie of a West Side business owner, and gradually they’ll both contribute more — this isn’t going to be an abrupt change overnight.

Meanwhile, if you want to keep up on whatever wacky hijinks I get up to in my new stomping grounds, you are very welcome to join my new newsletter (wait, I just made this up right now… brb gotta go set up a new one… ok I think it works if you click on that, hopefully). I have no idea what it’s going to be about, and you’re under no particular pressure to join it. Will it come out weekly, monthly, or less frequently — perhaps not at all? No idea. It’s not going to be primarily about JC, so it’s very understandable if you’re not interested. But if you’ve ever been curious how a middle aged woman who has spent her entire life in the NYC metro area is going to adjust to Small Town USA in the Heartland, this is your chance.

I don’t want to get too heavy or anything, especially considering we have about six weeks before we leave, but writing this newsletter week after week has been a real pleasure and I will genuinely miss it. The way it’s made me focus on my local community has been really important to helping me to understand and make sense of the world — and not lose hope in these last few months. I’m sure I’m going to have plenty to say about JC and our community here over the next few weeks, so I’ll keep this short for now. But just, genuinely, thank you all for subscribing, for being there, and for sharing your Jersey City with me. I hope you’ll keep reading, and I know Katie & David are going to do an amazing job running this place.

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ICYMI

• You’ve probably heard by now about the tragic situation in which a child downtown was riding their bike and was hit by a truck and died Friday evening. Here’s an article with all the information available that we know as of Saturday evening. There will be a vigil sponsored by BikeJC and Safe Streets JC and held on Sunday, June 15th, at 7pm at the Hamilton Park gazebo. This is a really sad story, and I hope the family can recover from this in time.

• The Hudson County Commissioners voted for a new tax increase 8-1, with the sole “no” vote coming from JC mayoral candidate Bill O’Dea.

• The Lincoln Park Farmers Market starts up again this week, starting today (Sunday). 10-2pm at Belmont and West Side Ave, in Lincoln Park.

• The St. Al’s Carnival runs to 10pm on Sunday in Lincoln Park, right behind St. Al’s Church. They have food, games, performers, and a beer garden for the grownups. I love this event so much — it was super fun on Friday, kind of muted and quiet Friday given the rain and cold weather, and I’m hoping Sunday evening is going to be great for them. David & Katie’s band is playing at 3pm, so come by and check them out!

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Feral of the week

On a technicality, I have to award Feral of the Week to this guy:

Unbeknownst to me, my neighbor Lorraine made this amazing poster of my dog for his write-in campaign for sheriff. She eventually upgraded this to a lawn sign, and I hauled Oscar out (he’s so old he rarely leaves the house these days) for a photo op. He was… confused:

I haven’t had a chance to inquire how many people voted from him, but I heard from people all over the city that they did, and it looks like there were about 200 write-in votes that I’m just going to decide were all for him! By 8:45pm, Oscar had conceded the election and sent Jimmy Davis his congrats.

All of which leads me to our “real” Feral of the Week:

One of the many cats fed by my neighbor, who can be seen here clearly trying to figure out whether I’m the One Who Brings Food or not (staring at me with much interest at first, and once it was determined that the answer was no, moving on).

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1. Ok can we talk about this????? On one hand, I totally understand how he did well in E, given that that’s the part of JC that has done the best in his administration and received the most amount of attention overall. On the other, that ward elected James Solomon, who has styled himself as the anti-Fulop (Solomon has softened a bit on this lately, but that was his definite brand for many years). So… what??? This is all very interesting to me. Does downtown love Fulop or hate him? Or… what?