A super PAC that spent more than $11 million boosting former Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop’s campaign for governor last year is back with an all-new mission.
Voters in the 7th congressional district began getting mailers this week supporting Michael Roth, one of four Democrats hoping to challenge Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) in the state’s most competitive House seat, from Coalition for Progress, an independent expenditure group that just last year was a key part of Fulop’s unsuccessful bid for the governorship.
According to FEC filings, the new Coalition for Progress, formed on April 23, is technically a different PAC from the old one, which was officially terminated on April 10, 2025; the old Coalition for Progress has a Washington address, while the new one is based in Summit, a key town in the 7th district. The two PACs share a treasurer, however: Drew Nussbaum, who is business partners with Fulop’s wife Jaclyn.
In an email to the New Jersey Globe, Nussbaum said that his PAC “is supporting Michael Roth for Congress because he’s the strongest candidate to defeat Tom Kean, Jr., help Democrats take back control of the House of Representatives in November and hold Donald Trump accountable.”
Nussbaum said the PAC has nothing to do with Fulop, though he did not disclose any other details about who is funding it or what its longer-term plans are. A person familiar with the PAC said that it’s funded by Roth supporters who want to assist the campaign beyond the $7,000 individual donation cap.
The PAC’s existence is not necessarily unusual in the modern era of New Jersey politics. This cycle alone, 11th district Democrats Tom Malinowski and Brendan Gill and 2nd district Democrats Bayly Winder and Tim Alexander have all benefited from (or, in Alexander’s case, helped found) super PACs devoted primarily to assisting their campaigns.
One of Roth’s foes in the 7th district, Rebecca Bennett, has been boosted by more than $400,000 in spending from VoteVets, though that’s an established national group that has spent on behalf of other New Jersey candidates before.
Because Coalition for Progress 2.0 is so new, little is known about how much money it will be able to invest in the race. Although mailers have already begun going out, the PAC has not yet filed any fundraising or expenditure reports detailing how much it’s raised and spent so far.
The original Coalition for Progress was established in 2015, when Fulop was mulling a 2017 gubernatorial campaign (he eventually decided not to run). Its then-leader, Bari Mattes, said that the PAC intended to get involved in a number of different races and election cycles, but it was widely seen as primarily a pro-Fulop vehicle; indeed, despite raising millions of dollars, it spent very little of that until Fulop entered the 2025 gubernatorial race.
At its peak, the PAC had amassed just over $11 million, more than Fulop or any other candidate was even allowed to raise into their own campaign accounts for the primary election. In the spring of 2025, it let loose, spending around $4.7 million on pro-Fulop ads, mailers, and signs; on March 31, it transferred its remaining $6.5 million in funds to a New Jersey-based PAC of the same name, and it was officially terminated as a federal PAC a week later.
There’s no evidence that Fulop, now the president of the Partnership for New York City, is connected to the PAC’s new incarnation. Nor is there much reason to believe the two PACs would share a donor base, since much of the original PAC’s fundraising came from Jersey City-based donors – including, controversially, donors with contracts or other business interests in Jersey City, where Fulop was the mayor.
This story was updated at 3:55 p.m. with comment from Nussbaum.
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February 14, 2025