Former Senate President Steve Sweeney tried to pick a fight on Monday with one of his potential opponents for the 2025 Democratic gubernatorial nomination over electric vehicles, but Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop refused to take the bait.
Fulop had penned a Star-Ledger Op-Ed on steps his city is taking to reduce its reliance on gasoline-powered trucks and cars.
“Alternative green energy, such as wind energy, electric energy, and solar power are needed priorities, but right now we need to invest in taxpayer relief, invest in urban redevelopment, and make sure that union brothers and sisters are working,” Sweeney said in a tweet aimed at Fulop.
Fulop, who is expected to run for governor, would not allow himself to get dragged in to an early skirmish.
“I’d like to think I’ve grown over the last seven years as a mayor and as a person. In 2015 and 2016 when I was looking at the Governor’s race as a candidate, I would get sucked into every little fight over petty things,” Fulop told the New Jersey Globe. “Looking back that was mostly fighting with Steve Sweeney.”
Fulop said that “in hindsight, that only served to hurt me and be a distraction from the good work we were doing in Jersey City.”
“It wasn’t productive and I’m not going to do that again,” he said. “I appreciate Steve’s tweet today, his overall perspective, and like any other resident that reaches out I’ll listen”